| Product: |
Accommodation in general |
| Date: |
16/03/01 (496 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Close proximity to all major student venues
Disadvantages: Security staff do not have enough power, over priced for the services.
I lived in the Student Village for my first year in Manchester, and it crippled me financially. Prices start at around £52 per week and what you get is a room with a bed, table, chair and a cupboard. You share a kitchen, shower, and toilet with three others, pay all your own electricity bills and buy all your own food. Compare this with other halls and you will realise that the deal you are getting is not very good at all. And when you realise that the heating come out of the electricity money and the flats get very cold very quickly you will see that Student Village are making a LOT of money.
Student Village is a massive building near the City centre of Manchester, close to the main All Saints Campus and the other satalite University buildings dotted all over Manchester. To get to the furthest campus (discounting Crewe and Alsager) it will take you about 10 minutes by the very frequent bus route which runs just past the accomodation.
The accomodation was very nice when I first went - the corridors and room were all painted a beige/cream colour which was very innofensive yet bright. All the rooms were separated into blocks of four small single rooms which shared a shower, toilet and kitchen, in a small flat stylee thang. These were all painted the same cream colour, contrasting the dull purple carpets. Then it all went a little Pete Tong and the bottom half of the walls were painted the same dull purple colour of the carpets and the place looked very dark indeed. There are also community rooms with a TV for those who couldn't afford one (and a TV liscense) and large foam chairs. One off these com rooms had to go round 100 people, and were nowhere near large enough for their purpose.
The main thing about the building is the close proximity to other students and I made some friends that I have kept to this day. Having the 'flat' approach with separate bedrooms is a good touch and makes it easy for freshers to make friends very qu
ickly.
The building is well lit and facilities such as the lifts and parking are quite good, though the season ticket for the car park is also very expensive. There is a bar downstairs that takes up quite a good portion of the ground floor, a corner shop for all your (minor) shopping needs, but due to the close proximety of the city centre you should not go here for most of your shopping. There is also a laundry/drying room.
Security is the building's main downfall. To get into the building you need to show a pass to the security guards after using a pass to get through the main doors. Now after this, the staff can be a little hot and cold. The security staff are very quick to act on complaints of noisy neighbours, but more serious issues are given a blind eye. In the year I was there, there were two attacks from one student on girls. I know the reputation of the whole building should not be tarnished by one idividual resident, but it is the attitude of the security staff that concerns me. The security staff were unwilling to help very much other than to allow the girls in question to ring the police from the internal phone line. On the arrival of the Police they told them that the security cameras were not operational, and also saying that they were not allowed to enter the resident's room. This was a MAJOR fault in my eyes and the safety of residents should be their main priority. In my view, it is not.
I think that the Student Village is not worth the money and have their priorities in the wrong place. They make a lot of money from students, yet seem to allow standards to slip in ares that are very worrying.
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