…and a Happy New Year! Well, here we are at our very last blog post of 2014 and what a year it has been for us all. The Accommodation Office experienced our busiest summer yet with the blog achieving over 32,000 views and our comms centre answering over 4,000 calls from you all in one month alone – wowee! We welcomed over 5,500 students in to university accommodation in September and have met with so many of you at our drop-in sessions, open days and offer holder visit days throughout the year.
We are looking forward to seeing you all again at the Students’ Guild Housing Fair on Tuesday 13 January 2015 in the Great Hall where you will have the opportunity to meet with landlords and see what accommodation is available on campus for our returning students. See our newsletter for further information. For those of you who are looking within the private sector, are you aware that the Students’ Guild Advice Unit offer a free contract checking service – just call in when the Advice Unit is open or send an electronic copy to advice@exeterguild.com?
Talking about contracts…did you know that you’re able to access your contract at any time by logging in to your accommodation account? We have been receiving some enquiries from students wishing to terminate their contracts early in order to move to non-university accomodation. When you accepted your offer, you entered into a legally binding contract with the University of Exeter so we are unable to release students from their accommodation, unless another student (studying at the University of Exeter and not currently in university accomodation) can be found to take over their contract. If a student leaves University accommodation without finding someone to takeover their room, they will remain liable for the fees of their room for the full period of the contract even if they decide not to stay. This is explained within clause 4.3 of the accommodation agreement and further details are also available in section 9 of the Residential Regulations. Please do contact us if you require any further information on this or to receive details on how to advertise your room to other students and remember that the Students’ Guild Advice Unit can give independant advice on contractual matters.
If you are remaining on campus over the Christmas vacation, please do let us know by logging an enquiry via SID. Also, make sure you check our website to see the opening times of various student services and to see what events are taking place, including Christmas lunch at Lopes Hall on Christmas Day. Please note that the Accommodation Office is closed from 5:00pm on Tuesday 23 December 2014 and will be available again on Monday 5 January 2015. If you have specific issues concerning your residence, then please note that a Residence Manager will be on call 24/7 over the Christmas period and can be contacted via Estate Patrol 723999 or email.
With January just around the corner, we will soon be waving a fond farewell to our Erasmus/Study Abroad students who joined us for semester one. If you are moving out in January, please refer to our moving out pages for information on how to leave your room and where to return your key. You may have some items which could be donated to the British Heart Foundation – see our ‘donate it’ poster for further information. Not only are students leaving us in January, we also get to say a big ‘hello and welcome’ to students joining us for semester two (January-June). If you are joining us in January, please refer to our moving in pages for information about key collection and arrival.
May all of us in in the Accommodation Office take this opportunity to wish our landlords and our past, current and prospective students a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We shall be back with our first blog of 2015 on Wednesday 7 January. Until then… you can receive a bad cracker joke to keep you going: What is the best Christmas present in the world? A broken drum – you just can’t beat it!
Accommodation Catherine (hoping I get a better joke book on Christmas Day)