It's been a bit of a manic first semester so far. There have been so many issues coming up that we've collected feedback on. In this blog, I'm going to go through what you told me, what I did with that information and the changes that were made because of it.
Circuit Laundry
We've had issues with launderettes for a while. Last year a number of issues were raised with the University and it looked like there had been some progress, but by the time we came back from summer we were seeing even more problems than before. We ran a survey of 557 students, here are the results.
554 of you said the launderettes are overpriced for the quality of service you get.
3 of you said they are good value for money.
390 of you said that the dryers do not dry your clothes properly.
116 of you said that your clothes have been permanently damaged by the washers or dryers.
5 of you said the launderettes have been fine this year.
These numbers are pretty shocking need very little qualification. It’s clear from this that students are overwhelmingly unhappy with the level of service they currently get and how much they have to pay for it.
I took this to the University, they responded first by getting Circuit to come in and run maintenance on all the machines on campus and tweak their washing cycles so they wash clothes properly.
After this, we were still seeing significant issues from the washers and dryers so I met with a representative from Circuit themselves. He totally took onboard the issues raised by students, in the next semester we should see some improvement in the performance of the washers and dryers alongside some clearer information around which ways their machines need to be treated differently to washers and dryers in peoples’ homes.
This isn’t the end, if we don’t start seeing some serious improvement in service next semester then we will escalate the issue further and demand change.
Parking
Where to even start! At the start of this year, I said that parking was going to be an issue and I was right. Between the demise of Horwood carpark and the free for all permit system, we saw some major issues with parking this ear. That’s not to even mention that awful article vilifying students parking in Keele Village who just wanted to get to their lectures
There was a huge amount of student feedback on this issue and the ‘idea’ on our website shot to the top of the rankings.
We got in touch with the sentinel and managed to get a much more balanced account of the issues of parking published. Alongside this, we went to the University to demand action on this.
In the short term they agreed to relax their parking enforcement for permit holders, meaning that if you had a permit but couldn’t find a ‘proper’ place to park but weren’t causing problems you wouldn’t be penalised. They then agreed to free up the golf course parking spaces, initially planned for contractors, for students to use. Once the new Barnes was done there were even more parking spaces freed up. Although we have lots of new spaces there’s a new issue around the level of awareness of spaces, this means we still don’t really have a clue if the amount of spaces we have is right for the amount of permits we’ve given out. If we’re not careful this could mean the exact same thing happening next year!
Next semester we’ll be working with the University to nail down their communications around this and make sure that we’re learning as much as we can from the massive issues we’ve had this year.
Buses
First Bus? More like Worst Bus right? In all seriousness though, the level of service from First Buses particularly has been a massive issue this year. Early on in the semester, we ran a survey to find out what students think of them.
729 of you said that the buses in Newcastle are mostly late.
Only 10 of you said they were mostly on time.
231 bus pass users said they were unhappy with the level of service.
Only 20 bus pass users said they were happy with it.
167 students without bus passes said they were unhappy with the level of service.
Just 32 students without bus passes said they were happy with it.
344 of you said that the buses are so bad that you actively avoid using them.
These numbers really do speak for themselves. We took them to the University and local council who used it to build up a business case for First Buses to demonstrate that if the improved their level of service they would get more customers. In the new year, there’ll be some targeted student consultation, the results of that consultation will lead to radical shifts in the service and - hopefully- massive improvements in the quality and consistency of public transport at Keele.
These are all massive issues and none of them really have easy fixes but I hope this leaves you with a clearer idea of what we’re doing about issues you’ve told us matter to you and how those little surveys can lead to bigger things!
This is by no means the only thing I’ve been working on this semester. I’m still working on making the SU better at listening to students, with modern and accessible democratic processes. I worked with the Estates team to make sure students moving into the new Barnes halls' grades didn't suffer. There’ll be a big push next semester to encourage students to register to vote too!
As always if there’s an issue you care about what you think we should be doing more on or have any ideas about how to make Keele even better drop me an email: su.uddofficer@keele.ac.uk