All Opal 2 residents' deposits were fully returned
Almost £92,000 was retained from University accommodation deposits last year, while Opal 2 gave all residents their full deposit back, Forge Press has discovered.
A Freedom of Information request revealed that £91,918.57 was kept from students to pay for damages and any additional cleaning requirements.
Students pay a deposit of £150 when moving into University accommodation. This year’s amount of unreturned deposits has almost doubled from last year, when more than £56,000 was retained from students.
By contrast, Opal 2 residents were not charged for any damaged property in their accommodation for the second consecutive year and were returned their full deposits. The system to account for damages in these flats was different from the rest, although that has changed this year.
An Accommodation and Commercial Services (ACS) spokesperson said: “The cost isn’t just for the item but also includes labour, materials, delivery and VAT.
“It is therefore not appropriate to compare the costs directly to what you would expect to buy yourself on the high street.
“The replacement items also have to match the rest of the accommodation in terms of style, make and quality, as well as being items that we can maintain in future.”
Students who lived in Derwent apartments in Endcliffe Village suffered the most, with the retention of £12,261.82 from students’ deposits, whilst Froggatt apartments residents lost out on £10,160.68.
The spokesperson said: “In terms of Opal 2, this current year they are now using the same online inventory system and inspection process that we use for all other University accommodation, which in previous years has not been available to them, and will make them consistent with our other properties in terms of subsequent damage charging.”
Residents of Oakhome Road and Crewe Flats and Red Lane in Endcliffe Village were also fully refunded.
Opal 2 declined to comment.
Related posts:
Upon requesting a breakdown of charges, after receiving only £50 of my deposit back, I discovered I was charged £50 for a replacement carpet in the communal area that my flatmate damaged .
Annoyingly, the other £50 charge was for something I had damaged and admitted to.
I disputed the carpet charge and was told the only thing I could do is ask for my £50 back from the flatmate who caused damage to the carpet…
So moral of the story – if you break something in Uni halls, don’t admit it because your flatmate will unknowingly share the cost. Ridiculous.
Sorry Bryony, you realised how it works within your own post “Communal area” Naturally everyone will be responsible for something and if someone doesn’t own up to it then the cost will have to be split. How else do you expect uni to pay for new carpet?
Also 92k divided by the 5000 people in halls (if we’re excluding opal) is £18.40.
£18.40! Not such a massive story now is it.
Forge is ridiculous not this. I bet this comment will probably be moderated to not appear on the site too now.
Or another way to put it. £150 in deposit for those 5000 is £750,000!
So Uni gave back £658,000 in deposit, but kept like 12% to pay for costs and damages that folk caused. Again, see how much of a non story this is now.
Actually I lived in Crewe last year and two of my flat mates did not revceive thier full deposit back and were never sure why.
Actually James Hall, I think it’s more to do with the obscene charges made for ‘damage’ than the actual number of people being charged. I agree its fair for people who have caused damage to pay for it but I for one am apparently being charged £500+ for a carpet in my room after I ‘burnt’ it, despite having nothing in my room that could possibly burn a carpet. On closer inspection these ‘marks’ equated to the size of a pen top. Oh, and yeah they didn’t ‘match the rest of the accommodation in terms of style, make and quality’ seeing as they replaced the carpet ( WITHOUT my knowledge) with a completely different colour and style. They didn’t even replace the carpet under the bed. I shall be taking this further as I know I did not cause this and I would encourage anybody who is in dispute with their bills to do the same.