written by TC500 on 11/03/2015
It is hard to know where to start to write about all the negatives of living at Storthes! I'll start with the reason I booked there. The University must be in some sort of lucrative contract with the owners of Storthes as there is no reason anyone would think this is the best option for accommodation in Huddersfield if they were aware of the other options. There are numerous other accommodation halls all within about 5 mins walk of the university campus which I had never heard anything from the university about. I feel quite mislead that the university did not give a full overview of the options - it clearly shows that they are more interested in making money than that their students are happy/satisfied with where they have to live. Storthes is located (completely unnecessarily) 5 miles away from the university. This means that you have to catch buses to and from university. On an open day, they will tell you that the bus is usually free, and in the day time, it is. However in the evening or at weekends, the buses run very infrequently and you generally have to pay for them, and every time you go out in the evening (returning after 23:00) you have to pay for a taxi back - which all adds up over a year as living in the other halls in the town, you can just walk back. When you get to storthes, it doesn't improve either as the site seems like it has not been renovated for decades - to say it's grotty and poorly maintained is a massive understatement. Issues with hot water, or even clean water are common, and the heating system is not good. this is not helped by the fact that most of the fixtures and fittings are fitted poorly, for example, when my window is closed, the curtains still blow in the wind because there is that much of a draft. They also gave me the most uncomfortable and grotty mattress I have ever slept on, and it's only a single bed. The bathrooms are also horrible, as they are wet rooms with shower curtains. Wet rooms can be fine if they are installed properly, however this is Storthes so obviously nothing is installed properly. The fan in my bathroom was so useless that mold started to grow on my bathroom ceiling. The kitchen that you are shown on an open day will not bare any resemblance to the one they will give you. the one they will give you will be scruffy and have really old ovens, hobs, etc. and they don't give you much space.
Storthes is actually quite an expensive place to live considering how horrible it is - you can get a room at the much more conveniently located Firth Point for roughly the same price. this cost is added to by the company which owns it who are VILE! they will pick up on any tiny detail, literally any minor accidental damage to the flats and they will charge you through the nose for breech of contract. the fines don't stop at minor accidental damage either, if your friends or family come to visit and they are accidentaly parked in a place which they are not supposed to be parked in, within literally about 5 minutes they will have a £100 fine on their windscreen. when you complain to them, they either blame someone else - e.g it's not our fault the water is running brown from your tap, it's our water suppliers fault. and sometimes, they even try to blame YOU the resident. When I reported the mold on my ceiling, they tried to blame me for not ventilating my room properly! They set up a facebook page each year, and hope that no prospective future students look at it, as it is basically just the residents complaining about how awful Storthes is. they say that it is the facebook page for duscussing things about Storthes but the administraitors (Storthes staff) ignore any major issues raised, and any basic ones they just post "report it to reception".
The laundry, onsite bar and onsite shop are an absolute rip off - they basically charge hugely inflated prices just because they can as it is the only shop for miles around. they also charge you £1.85 for cash withdrawals which is ridiculous when often the reason for getting cash out is so that you can pay for bus fares.
As far as I can tell, the businiess model for Storthes Hall is to run a poor service at minimal cost, fine the residents as much as possible until they leave, and force them into a contract which ties them in for a whole year - you can't back out of it like you can with some other places, you have to pay the whole years rent even if you decide to leave after a few weeks. They get away with it as each year the university (wrongly) advises people to book there saying its where all first years go (it's not - it's probably less than half of 1st years), and then do the same each year, as each naive year group gets mislead into booking there again and again. The fact that they have to reduce the re-bookers rate to £69 and even then no one re-books says it all realy!
My advice would be not to bother even looking round it as there are many far better options in the centre of the town. they will all be full of 1st year students so don't think you'll be missing out by not being with 'most of the 1st years'! and also I will just add that all the student halls in Huddersfield are en suite. better options include:
Aspley Halls (They are expensive but nice)
Saw Mill (Similar to Aspley)
The Castings (Similar to Aspley)
Snow Island (Cheaper - similar price to Storthes, but still in a great location)
Firth Point (Similar to Snow Island)
I would reccommend searching for these accommodation sites on Google (Because the university won't tell you about them) and booking a viewing for when you come for your open day.
Congratulations if you had the stamina to reach the end of this rant/review! If I can save one person the misery of living at Storthes, it will have been worth it!
Thanks for reading!