King's College, Cambridge

Rents for Undergraduate Rooms

Proposal

  1. The enclosed paper has been discussed with representatives of the Access Alliance and KCSU. They will be holding an open student meeting on 26 January.
  2. The proposals in the paper make several changes to the present system of rents and to the increase agreed by Council last June. Specifically:
    1. the objectives for the rental system are formalised and the objectives relating to access are clearly set out; there is no objective concerning rents in other Colleges;
    2. the real increase of 8.3% is reduced to 6.5%, to reflect a mistake in the treatment of heating charges;
    3. the relative rents of different rooms will be adjusted, to give a wider range and so that some 20% of rooms have no increase at all; at present the lowest cost rooms are at rents of some 80% of the highest cost rooms and this significantly understates relative facilities, floor area and attractiveness;
    4. rent will be for a 10 week term (9 weeks in the Easter term) which will make management of conferences easier and is more equitable between students; rents are reduced by 3% to reflect this change; the Assistant Tutor will allow students with good reasons to stay longer, as occurs currently, and additional rent would then be charged on a weekly basis;
    5. heating, including estimates for individual metered electricity and gas, will be included in rents and not itemised or charged separately;
    6. in future (and when data are available) aggregate rents should expressly be cost-based, with appropriate action to be taken if this is going to damage access; and relative rents should be set to "feel fair".
  3. We propose that students who remain on rent strike should be given places in the rooms ballot in the normal way but, if their rent is still outstanding at the time a room comes to be allocated, they will not be allocated a room and instead will be placed at the back of the ballot list. Rent in the KCSU trust account will not be considered as having been paid.

Vote

  1. It is proposed that the Vote should read that Council:
    1. Received a paper from the Senior Tutor, Financial Tutor and Bursar;
    2. Agreed to adopt the rent policy annexed to the paper;
    3. Agreed that the paper setting out the rent policy should be made widely available;
    4. Agreed that students will not be entitled to be allocated rooms for 2000/01 unless they have paid their rent.

Keith Carne
Roger Salmon
Rob Wallach

25 January 2000

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