Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
A student accommodation cots survey has been running for since the late 1960. M.E.L Research supported the roll out and analysis of the 2021 iteration in partnership with Unipol and the NUS, with the resulting report published in December 2021.
The research was conducted into purpose-built student accommodation across the UK and the Republic of Ireland to understand the profile of the sector, the cost of accommodation to students, contract lengths, additional costs, regional variation in cost, reasons for cost variance, types of accommodation provided, year-on-year trends, provider support for tenant equality, wellbeing and welfare, rent setting processes, the range and balance of institutional portfolios, the affordability of accommodation and the outlook for the sector.
An online survey was sent to both institutional and private providers to capture data on the range of purpose-built provision and associated services (PBSA), policies, processes and uses, and on the detail of their rent structures for 2020/21 and 2021/22. Together with its sector contacts, Unipol promoted the survey. The fieldwork elicited 141 returns, 79 from institutions and 62 from private and charitable providers.
Overall, responses accounted for 473,684 bed spaces. This marks a high point in the survey’s history and represents 68 per cent of the purpose-built student accommodation sector, up from a 60 per cent participation rate in 2018/19.
This research delivered fresh insight into accommodation costs for students and how these continue to pose a risk to the accessibility of higher education. As the first post pandemic study of this type this Resrech was also an opportunity to reflect on the sectors response to lockdowns and the medium term financial impacts of these.
Overall the private sector is now the main provider of PBSA, adding around 30,000 tenants a year to their stock, while educational institutions remain static at best. There is evidence in this report that formal links between educational institutions and other providers– in the form of partnership operations to provide bed spaces – are falling in number, as many institutions look to de-couple themselves from the risk of having empty beds. This risk materialised during the pandemic, which has created longer-term uncertainty in the higher education and PBSA sectors.
You can read the NUS / Unipol Student Accommodation Report here.
