Waiving Student Rent

[The Painter]

Hi everyone, I have a situation at the moment where my daughter has had to return home from University mid march due to impending lockdown and has left her Uni accomodation which she shares with three friends, the house is rented from a small business specialising in student accomodation, most halls of residence and a lot of accomodation providers have waived the final term rent due to the students not being able to use the property, the landlord in question here is totally refusing to either waive of reduce the rent which in my daughters case is £1440, the rent was due on the 20th of April and at this time I have cleared the house of my daughters belongings, returned the key to the landlord by recorded delivery and have written to them to inform them that I will not be releasing any money until I have taken legal advice, I realise that we may be contractually liable here as the rental agreement has no breakout clause, however I am rather disgusted with the landlords attitude and wonder if its worthy of a fight ?

I would greatly appreciate any views

Many Thanks

[ULA]

Hi The Painter you have my sympathy my daughter is in private rented student accommodation but back at home and has had to pay rent for a place she is not living in at the moment. *

Unfortunately student uni accommodation is not regulated and it seems to be down to the individual university if it is university run accommodation or the private company that runs it on behalf of the uni. If there is no early termination clause in the agreement with the uni or the private company responsible of for the uni accommodation, I am really not sure that you can do anything about it, other than write to the relevant organisation and urge that they join the around 60 universities that have waived rent in their uni accommodation for this term.

If your daughter is renting via an agency that specialising in student accommodation, in most cases the accommodation is actually owned by a private landlord. If it is anything like my daughter's tenancy agreement then there is no early termination and the rent has to be paid for the full tenancy period.*

Sorry I cannot come up with something more helpful that you can do