How to: Guarantor
‘A guarantor is someone who agrees to pay your rent if you don’t pay it, for example a parent or close relative.’* Most students require a rent guarantor to secure accommodation at university, but for the 16,000 university students who have been in care or are estranged from their families, asking a parent or relative isn’t an option.
We know universities want to rise to this challenge and put the support estranged and care experienced students need in place, but it’s not always a straight road.
In 2023 we launched our #BeOurGuarantor campaign to encourage universities to step up and support estranged and care experienced students with free guarantor provision. We quickly learnt that people didn’t need convincing, you get it – you know the risk is low and the reward is high – you just need a bit of support working out ‘How to…’
Last year Cardiff University and Imperial College London shared details of their successful schemes and we’ve spoken to universities taking other approaches. They’re all doing it slightly differently; in house schemes, covering commercial provider fees, building it into PBSA contracts… what’s important is the cost and stress is taken away from students who don’t have family support.
We ran a series of webinars for universities to troubleshoot bumps in the road with others who get it – and contribute to our guide to help more people work out How to: Guarantor.
In our webinar series we covered:
+ Assumptions around guarantors
+ Guarantor’s and the Renters Rights Bill.
+ Commercial options: we heard from Housing Hand and Rent Guarantor.
+ In house options: we heard from Imperial College London who have been running a successful guarantor scheme since 2017.
The final session in our How to: Guarantor webinar series will be taking place on Friday 12th September. In this session we will be covering the results from our guarantor website audit and a preview of our How to: Guarantor guide. Save your space here.
Following our How to: Guarantor webinar series, we will be doing an audit of all university websites between 1st-18th July and publishing the results. Only 54% of universities have clear information on their websites about what a guarantor is and who needs one. If your university website doesn’t already have clear information about guarantors, then we strongly encourage you to act now. You can find example language here. Copy and paste this information to your central accommodation page and to any pages that signpost estranged and care experienced students to support.
Everyone wins when all students can stay at university and complete their degree.