55 Virtual Brochure – February 2024 • Warm and welcome campus – providing warm spaces, charging for mobile devices and showers within campus. • Affordable food options – providing affordable food options on campus, free breakfasts and free lunches and Café discounts, providing campus catering vouchers for some students. • Accommodation discounts - some institutions are freezing or discounting rents for university-owned and managed accommodation. • Emergency loan schemes - emergency loans intended to support students in crisis. They are relatively small (e.g., max of £100 per student) and must normally be paid back within six weeks. Bridging loans are offered to students if loans are late in coming through. • Microwaves and hot drinks – some universities offer free tea and coffee to all students and kitchens with microwaves. • A cost-of-living website hub – a dedicated cost of living website hub which includes signposting to hardship fund information and schemes such as food discounts and emergency food boxes. • Promoting job opportunities – promoting job opportunities to help increase student income. • IT equipment - offering free recycled IT equipment to students. • Online cookery classes – providing recipe cards and bags of ingredients needed to make a weekly meal during online cook-along sessions. Considerations for universities in relation to hardship support schemes, are ensuring that the practices are communicated to all students, universities are clear about how long the support/services will be in place and ensuring that they can continue to be funded and delivered if demand is high. We can help We have undertaken student hardship related reviews as part of our annual programmes. It’s also clear that the costof-living crisis impacts across university activities – and we factor that into our work as well. Maria Wright – Senior Audit and Risk Consultant – mwright@uniac.co.uk
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