Month: August 2016
Reported gas leak at new law clinic building, Canterbury campus
Reports are coming in of a gas leak at the new law clinic building on the University’s Canterbury campus. People have been evacuated from Eliot, Rutherford, Templeman Library, and the Senate. The leak has been caused by a contractor cutting through a pipe, and has been contained. Those on campus are being advised to keep windows closed as there may be a strong smell of gas. Campus security were assisted by gas experts on site. All buildings have now…
850 complaints made about rented properties in Canterbury
852 complaints have been issued to Canterbury City Council (CCC) over the state of rented accommodation in Canterbury between 2011 and August 2016. This figure equates to an average of 15 complaints made by tenants each month. According to Home Stamp, a student accommodation website for Canterbury, estimates 324 current student properties in the area. Canterbury is not made up entirely of students, but if it were, more than half of student properties would be subject to complaints each year. As it is, students of Canterbury’s various universities make up roughly 40,000 of the city’s 151,200 strong population. This…
Construction of Student Hub halted
Building work on Greenwich and Kent’s (GK) Students’ Union’s Student Hub has been put on pause following the contractor going into administration. Cardy Construction Limited was chosen to build the Students’ Union building on the Medway campus, however with the future of the company in question, work has halted on the site. The Student Hub was expected to open on Arrivals Weekend 2016, with an official launch in October, but the opening of the SU building has now been delayed to later in the Autumn Term. Kent Union have said in a statement: “Following a short delay, construction on…
University response to Brexit questioned
Following the results of the EU referendum, the University of Kent has been questioned about how it approached the possibility of a Brexit result in the lead up to the referendum, and how it has responded since. In the week following the leave result, the University contacted current students, staff and applicants to assure all that the University are talking to the relevant people about what ‘leave’ means for Kent. InQuire asked the University who they had been in contact with and what specifically the University were asking about. A spokesperson said: “Since the announcement of the referendum result,…
Student safety at the University of Kent
With the introduction of the University’s new SafeZone app, InQuire chose to investigate how the crime levels have changed at the Canterbury campus over the past five years after submitting freedom of information (FoI) requests to the three emergency services. The statistics have been largely positive, finding that Kent Police and Fire Rescue Service call outs have been steadily declining over the past five academic years. The year 2011/12 shows significantly higher figures for visits from these services. In that year, Kent Police visited 103 times. In contrast, from September 2015 to the end of March 2016, when FoI…