I was disappointed but not surprised to see the article ‘Students told to renew 2015 tenancies now, October 21’.

Here at Oxford Brookes Students’ Union, we have been campaigning for some time to encourage students to wait before making their decisions on where to live and who to live with. We know that students can get nervous about waiting too long to take on their tenancies for the next academic year as they know that there is a shortage of rental accommodation in the city.

We are launching our “Don’t Rent Yet” campaign to persuade students that they don’t need to enter into a 2015-16 tenancy agreement now, with the term less than five weeks old.

There are many reasons why this is not necessary: 1) Students don’t yet know if they will pass this academic year. Most students are yet to submit any work, and they will only start receiving results in January.

Today’s letters

2) They don’t yet know who they will want to live with next year. Freshers have only just arrived, many will not have met the people that they may want to move in with yet. Forcing students to make these decisions can lead them to living with people they may not want to. Some students will have single tenancy agreements, and may become liable for other people’s rent. If students are forced into making quick decisions, they may not be able to effectively gauge if this is an appropriate risk.

3) Students have low amounts of disposable income. Entering into a rental agreement this early just hands over money to letting agents and landlords, who happily enjoy the interest. We are also concerned about letting agents who charge full set-up fees to all of the students in a house, despite them having a shared tenancy agreement.

4) Landlords in Oxford are often accused of keeping houses in poor standards, indeed the council have issues fines of over £64,000 to dodgy landlords. Does having tenancies agreed so far in advance lessen the need for landlords to improve the quality of housing?

5) The sense of panic forced on to students by made-up deadlines from landlords is unfair and unnecessary.

We will continue to try to influence students not to rent too soon, but to wait until February or March before making their decisions for the next academic year. This will still allow landlords and rental agents to ensure that they have filled all of their accommodation, without taking advantage of students or lumping all of the risk involved with renting on to the student population.

Andy Pedersen, Brookes Union President

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