Sorry and my pre Guild Council Blog

Firstly, my apologies for the appalling infrequency of my blogs for the last month; it has been a particularly busy time and I have not made the time to blog. So here is a catch up on everything I have been doing recently.

Strategic Plan - The Guild is in the process of developing its strategic plan and at the start of September we had the first of many meetings to decide on the themes of the plan one of which is our impact in the Community! There will be more discussions surrounding the plan before it is taken for consultation with you, the students. It is quite an operational plan and allows each officer’s manifestos each year to feed into the fabric of the Guild and get certain important aims embedded in the Guild's culture.

Welcome Weekend and Welcome Week - I was heavily involved in the planning of Welcome Week and I was around Welcome Weekend for the move-in days. The move-in weekend went relatively well aside from traffic issues because of Mason but overall the Welcome Crew seemed well motivated and helped out as much as possible. There were no major problems only smaller problems that were all solved relatively quickly thanks to a great effort on the part of HAS. Welcome Week itself was long, tiring and difficult but a massive success. The Officer Team spoke to loads of new students and our purple Welcome Crew were fantastic. There were some problems but nothing that couldn't be solved and although I ended the week exhausted I was also delighted we had such a great week!

Start of term - The first weeks of term were again busy, I went to my first Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee for the College of Arts and Law. It was an interesting experience listening to lecturers at ground level talk about the quality of Student Reps and of their degree programmes. I also sat on the appointments panel again for the vacant external trustee positions. I also attended accommodation management group and talked about the progress of the Community Warden Scheme, the Student Mentor Scheme and Residence Associations while also discussing Welcome Weekend and the start of term from Hospitality and Accommodation Services' point of view.

Halls of Residence Fees - Also in the week of the start of term my campaign to reduce halls of residence fees took a new turn. I was given a meeting with Gill Ball Acting Registrar and Secretary and Director of Finance at the university following the release of the Guild's report on Accommodation pricing policies of our institution. She was particularly positive about the report and mentioned that it highlighted some areas for improvement and a need to provide more affordable accommodation for students. The proposals we suggested will now be taken further before the Residence fees are set for the next year, I will keep you updated but at the moment we are not reacting to anything until a definitive response to the report becomes apparent.

The SHAC - I have continued to study whether the SHAC is a feasible and it is becoming very apparent that it is. We visited Cardiff Students' Union who have a fully functioning letting agent and it works well though it was more commercial than I would like ours to be. I have now submitted a motion to this Guild Council and subject to approval I will continue to push on with the research and will work through a number of models before presenting a final model to Guild Council sometime in the future. It is an exciting project though and one that could end up having massive benefits for students at Birmingham.

Housing Campaign - The Housing Fair will now be held on 25th November. For many years the housing campaign and subsequent fair had been held after Christmas with little or no effect on the rumour that students must find a house before Christmas. This rumour could not be further from the truth, students do not need to get their house for sometime as there is a massive surplus of houses in Selly Oak; you could wait until July and still find a decent house for the next year. The Housing Fair will be a celebration of choice, that students have the choice to get know better the people they want to live with and they should take advantage of that choice; getting a house in November doesn’t help anyone except unscrupulous Letting Agents and Landlords. The Housing Fair will show you the houses and landlords on offer but DO NOT sign up to a house then, look around what is available and wait until after Christmas to go back and get the house. You have the power, letting agents and landlords need you to let their houses, wait until you are ready.

Vale Fireworks – For those who heard rumours about the Vale Fireworks, they will now go ahead as planned and as spectacular as always at the Vale funded by your Residence Associations so many thanks to them for putting up the extra money and many thanks to our Venues department who have worked very hard to make sure it happens.

Thanks for reading and see you at Guild Council!