On 16 February, the Students’ Union’s executive officer team released a counter-proposal to the University’s rent hike for the 2026/27 academic year. The rent hike entails a blanket 3% increase for all University of Manchester-owned accommodation and a 5% increase for leased accommodation.
The Executive Officers have explicitly stated that “they do not support this proposal” and were “excluded from decision-making spaces” prior to the proposal being made. Their counter proposal suggests a rent increase of 0% on university-owned accommodation and 2% for leased accommodation.
The University’s financial policy also came into question, with the Officers’ statement highlighting that the University ended the 2024/25 financial year in a surplus of £87 million. According to their calculations, the implementation of the University’s proposed rent hike would generate the University £1 million over the course of the next academic year.
In an interview with The Mancunion, Lexie Baynes, the elected Union Affairs (UA) Officer, said: “we know through […] data, research, and student anecdote” that students simply cannot afford any form of rent hike. She added that only “34% of students say that the maintenance loan covers their rent.”
This mirrors the question posed by the Executive Officers’ joint statement: why is the University saving it’s large annual surplus “for a rainy day” while rent is unaffordable for its students?
The NUS definition of affordable rent is that it should cost less than 50% of the maximum maintenance loan. The 2023 rent strike proposed a set of demands to the University, including that 40% of the accommodation portfolio should meet the NUS affordability definition. In an SU referendum at the time, 10,690 students voted in favour of the demands; a staggering majority win of 97%.
The University currently interprets the NUS affordability definition based on the assumption that the maintenance loan is intended to support students for 41 weeks. This would set the affordable rate at £128.59 per week, which is met by 27% of the University’s portfolio.
This interpretation is disputed by the Executive Officer team, who calculate the affordability threshold assuming that the maintenance loan should support students for over 52 weeks. This interpretation would mean that the University of Manchester currently has no accommodation that meets the NUS affordability definition.
Clearly, the counterproposal made last month by the executive officers will not immediately improve affordability to the levels expected by the 2023 rent strike demands. UA Officer Lexie explained that to see affordability increase long-term, she supports a move away from private accommodation.
Unite Students and iQ Student accommodation, the two providers of the University’s leased accommodation, report adjusted profits of £232.3m and £180.6m respectively in their most recent accounts. On behalf of the SU Executive Officer team, Lexie said: “we would always prefer the University to own [accommodation] and operate in-house, because that is […] using a pricing and operating model which the University is ultimately in control of.”
However, she argued that it would be “counter-intuitive” for the executive officers to suggest an immediate move away from leased accommodation while the university welcomes 8,000 students per year. With limited spaces currently available in university-owned halls, Lexie explained: “we don’t want to be in a position where we are actually denying students places in beds and halls.”
Instead, she emphasised the importance of bursaries in helping students to afford rent in the immediate. The Executive Officer team is currently looking at increasing the household income threshold below which students are eligible for the accommodation bursary, which discounts recipients £2,050 from their rent.
The other important components of the Executive Officers’ strategy moving forward, Lexie explains, will be questioning, “if the university operates with a surplus of £87m per year, how is that invested back into students?”
The executive officer’s proposal criticises the university policy of saving funding “for a rainy day”, saying: “from where students are standing, today is the rainy day and it is torrential.”
In line with the statement, Lexie highlighted the inseparability of students’ material conditions of living from their university and learning experience: “In terms of the Manchester 2035 strategy, yes, that is an explicit investment in students, but it is particularly focused on the curricular experience. So now we want to see a similar investment in the extra-curricular experience.”
Lexie said that rent prices were central to this investment, giving the example of the proposed prices for the new Fallowfield accommodation: “the current pricing is way too expensive; students simply cannot afford it. And if they can, it will be at the detriment of incurring other costs.”
She said that as well as fighting rent hikes, investment in students’ material conditions also looks like “the academic advisor model being completely revised […] looking at how students who take part in extracurricular activities are rewarded for their time,” and material compensation for current and future students living on the Fallowfield building site.
In response to The Mancunion, a spokesperson for The University of Manchester said: “We understand the financial pressures that students are facing, particularly in the wider context of the limited growth in maintenance loans and cost-of-living challenges. Ensuring our students can focus on their studies and are supported financially has, and will always be, a top priority.”
“We are significantly investing in student support, such as through bursaries and the Cost of Living Support Fund, and are determined to offer even more support to our students. We are working with donors to help more students in need, and are actively engaging with government bodies to find meaningful solutions for struggling students.”
“We have worked closely with Students’ Union Executive Officers over the past year, meeting regularly to discuss accommodation and rents, and we have taken their views into account as part of the decision-making process.”
“To help mitigate cost-of-living pressures, the University also introduced a new accommodation bursary in 2025–26, providing £2,000 of support to 126 students from low-income and vulnerable backgrounds. This sits alongside a wider range of financial support available to students.”
“Each year our accommodation rents are carefully benchmarked against comparable UK higher education institutions, and we are confident they remain competitive and reasonable in comparison. Our rents are also significantly lower than the private sector locally and include welfare, and other on-site support services that are not available in private accommodation.”
“This year’s increase reflects inflationary pressures, rising operational costs across our residential portfolio, and supports ongoing investment in maintaining and improving our student accommodation, for which there is no direct central government funding. Even so, our rents remain among the lowest in the Russell Group.”
“To improve the overall experience, we have invested £132m in the last ten years to build new accommodation, refurbish existing sites, and close outdated halls as part of a major programme delivering 3,300 new beds for students.”
“By continuing to offer accommodation at rents below the local market, the University plays an important role in helping to keep overall student rents in the city lower than they might otherwise be. We will continue to review our financial support to make sure it reaches the students who need it most.”
