Your Student Union President, is off to London! Here’s everything that Cameron will get up to down in London!
As mentioned in his manifesto, the housing crisis for Scottish students is something that Cameron is keen to tackle as soon as possible, especially as it’s effecting students at Heriot-Watt University. Therefore, Cameron will be travelling down to London on the 23rd of October with other Student Union officers as part of the NUS organisation to lobby with your MP’s.
NUS stands for the National Union of Students, and many of its members will be travelling down to London with Cameron for ‘National Lobby Day’ to ask our MP to support the campaign for no more guarantors.
What is a National Lobby Day? And why do we want Guarantors abolished?
Well, a National Lobby Day is a day when every students’ union books a meeting with their MP on the same day and the purpose behind this is to ensure that everyone knows how to best support students.
The reason for wanting to get rid of guarantors is that current rental laws in the UK allow landlords to require their tenants to have a guarantor who owns property in the UK. Alternatively, to this, landlords can ask for a years’ worth of rent upfront which has proven to be an issue for students. So much so, that this issue has contributed heavily towards 13% of students having experienced homelessness.
As mentioned in his manifesto, and much of his work in his role as Student Union President, Cameron is passionate about mending the state of the student housing crisis and by going down to London and lobbying, this would prove a great step forward to fixing this issue. The Scottish Parliament have the power to make these changes, however by going directly to Westminster and getting it changed there, this will drastically improve the chance of Scotland adopting the same changes.
In addition to addressing and hopefully improving the current housing issue, Cameron and other Student Union representatives will also be discussing student struggles attached to high cost of living, further support for international and disadvantaged students and finally, the Housing Bill in the Scottish Parliament.
It would be great to see these issues tackled soon, as they are directly impacting many students, not only at Heriot-Watt University, but across Scottish Universities.