71 days to go. The countdown continues! 

In terms of ticking things off my list before I leave, this fortnight has been a busy one.  

As some of you will recall from my first campaign and first year in office, the housing crisis in Bath is one of the key issues I wanted to make some progress on during my time. I won’t spend lines on explaining what the housing crisis is, because I’m sure you know what I’m on about (if for whatever reason you’re not, drop me a line as a comment or send me an email and I’ll explain!). These are the different things I spent my time doing (and now Benji is leading on): 

1. Leading a top 10 on housing, which pushed the university to write a housing strategy for students after first year, in collaboration with the SU and the local council. This happened last year and, because we weren’t too happy with progress on a finalised written document, we put it on the top 10 again this year – which Benji is leading on now. Progress this year has been more promising, and we are expecting to have a finalised document relatively soon.  

2. Bringing up housing as a necessary area of investment at all relevant university meetings. This has happened in meetings with the director of campus services (who looks after accommodation on campus and in the city, as well as Student Pad); the university’s chief operating officer, and even meetings with university council members and the vice-chancellor. I am confident that they are all a lot more aware of the issue students face, and this for me is a key step in lobbying the university to invest in this area. 

3. Bringing up housing with politicians: this has been through the Student Community Partnership’s housing group, with local council members (and, just a couple weeks ago, I actually went to an all council meeting to plea the council to invest further in local housing standards and the policing of this), and even our Bath MP, Wera Hobhouse. 

4. Started thinking about the future of housing advice within the SU. One of the things I want to do before I leave is build a business case to give to the university on why we need more funding to provide good housing advice. More on this later.  

This list might not seem too long or impressive, but I promise you it’s taken a good chunk of my time and energy in the last two years. If you have any questions about it, reach out! I’m going home for Easter this evening (yes, home in Venezuela!), so I might not get back to you until after the break. Until then, enjoy the sun and be kind to one another.  

Much love,  

Jiji x  

P.S. Good luck with dissertations and final year projects for all you final years cramming in the work before the April deadline!