A new renters union has been established to address the ‘imbalance of power’ between students and landlords in Lincoln.
It comes after new powers were handed to the City of Lincoln Council earlier in the month to tackle poor housing in the private rented sector – after a summer in which they handed a record fine of £400,000 to one landlord.
Bradley Allsop, a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Lincoln, set up the union and told The Linc that it would help those who had been ‘bitten’ by the private rented sector.
He said: “I’ve had bad landlords before but what I’ve seen this year has just been on another level.
“I was just plugging away on my own trying to challenge these people, and it got me thinking that if we could have a collective response it would be so much stronger than individuals trying to work on their own – that’s the philosophy of unions.
“There’s a power imbalance with landlords and letting agents, particularly with students, because landlords assume that students aren’t going to know their rights, aren’t going to know what they’re entitled to and will be too scared to challenge them so I suppose to some degree the renters union is trying to address that imbalance in power.”
New regulations enforced by the City of Lincoln Council include new rules on space requirements and multiple occupancy- in a move which was expected to affect around 600 extra homes in Lincoln.
Grace Corn, VP Welfare and Community at the University of Lincoln Students’ Union (SU), said:
“Housing is an issue which I feel is very important to students and the SU prides itself on representing student tenants’ rights.
“Whilst the renters union isn’t officially affiliated with the SU, it is worth noting that support is available for students from our on-campus SU’s Advice Centre.
“Since opening in 2015, the Advice Centre has assisted on hundreds of cases involving students, landlords and agencies.”
The new union will be part of the nationwide ‘ACORN’ union- which has groups in locations from Belfast to Bristol.
Despite only being in its early stages, Mr Allsop said there has already been good support for the union.
“I thought something like this would take a while to get off the ground but we’ve had quite a lot of people interested already and from talking to some of them it seems to be that they have been bitten by the private rented sector and are a bit fed up and want to do something about it.
“It might be just the existence of a group that’s got a good membership that will be enough to make some landlords think twice about pulling a fast one, which will be great in itself,” said Mr Allsop.
More information about the union can be found by visiting its Facebook group page.
The SU’s Advice Centre is open between 12pm till 2pm from Monday to Friday.