This year one of my priorities is to improve the work of the Students’ Union Advice Centre and to continue to improve the excellent support delivered to students for 2014/2015.

My first priority has been to tackle the worrying numbers of students that miss appointments. Last year over 120 students didn’t turn up to their appointment despite some of them booking it on the same day!  

As a result of all that lost time in excess of 60 hours of the Students’ Union’s Advisor’s time was wasted and this is an issue that simply cannot be ignored. I recognise that we, as students, have a lot on our plates and on occasion can be a little forgetful, so I’ve worked hard to come up with a solution that should hopefully reduce the number of missed appointments.

Working alongside the Advice Centre, I’ve set up a text messaging service, very similar to that used by the NHS. This will first of all inform the student when their appointment is just after they have booked it, because let’s face it a torn off piece of paper or the back of a lecture slide is inevitably going to disappear into the abyss that is the student’s pockets or bags, and secondly a follow up text on the day of the appointment to remind the student again of the relevant details.

By doing this I hope to ensure our advisors’ time is more effectively utilised, meaning that more time is available to help students and so in turn ‘making student life better’ (see what I did there?!). The service is still being tweaked to work with our systems but should be coming online in the very near future. Watch this space.

Housing

Another of my priorities and one of the biggest issues students face in Huddersfield is safe and fair student housing. With this in mind, I spent last week on a training session with Unipol - a leading provider of student accommodation in Leeds - alongside a number of other Sabbatical Officers from around the country as well as the NUS Vice President Welfare, Colum McGuire.

It gave me a great insight into what Students’ Unions can do to support the continued improvement of student housing conditions. It also reinforced my beliefs on how important it is to get this part of a student’s life correct, as it “...can make or break a student’s experience at university... and their academic achievement” as Colum quite rightly said.

I’ve had my own fair share of ropey landlords with issues varying from carpet moth maggots (for a massive moth phobic this was quite possibly the worst scenario I could possibly be put in with the exception of a flock of pigeons taking nest in my bed but it really is a close call) to slugs in my living room; to having no water for a week and no heating for the entire year!

Essentially I don’t want any students to have to go through that and believe by working closely with our letting agency HudLets, we can provide a service for students that delivers safe, high quality accommodation for them during their time at Huddersfield.

I’m also working on putting the knowledge I gained during my Unipol session to good use by ensuring the Advice Centre continues to offer students a full suite of services for those unfortunate occasions when things do go wrong.

Alysia Ford

Vice President Wellbeing & Equalities