– in the Scottish Parliament at on 17 January 2018.
2. To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure there are appropriate levels of accommodation available for higher education students attending courses at campus. (S5O-01675)
Universities are independent autonomous bodies and, as such, they have responsibility for their staffing, admissions, subject provision, curriculum, research and student accommodation. The Scottish Government and the Scottish ministers are therefore unable to intervene in internal institutional matters such as student accommodation. However, as the member will be aware, the Government is absolutely committed to the higher education sector in Scotland, which is why we have invested more than £1 billion per year in it since 2012-13 and why, in 2018-19, we will deliver a real-terms increase in Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council funding, demonstrating our sustained commitment to the achievement of excellence and equity in education.
The growing success of Heriot-Watt’s campus in Stromness in my constituency has presented challenges in relation to student accommodation. I was contacted recently by a constituent who offers accommodation to eight of the university’s students each year. Unlike larger accommodation providers, he does not qualify for an exemption from the new private residential tenancy agreements introduced under the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016. That means that he cannot guarantee that students will leave after the term ends and, in turn, that he cannot offer accommodation to students for the next academic year because he does not know that the rooms will be vacant. Does the minister agree that that is not in the interests of students, the university or the wider Orkney economy, and will she agree to consult ministerial colleagues on how those provisions might be island proofed?
As Liam McArthur will be fully aware, Heriot-Watt relies very heavily on private landlords to provide student accommodation in Orkney. It has a dedicated staff resource to ensure that every student is accommodated—through, as he knows, private landlords. I am more than happy to take up the details of the issue that he has raised and discuss that with other ministers, particularly the Minister for Local Government and Housing.
It is clear that we have a problem across Scotland. At the University of Stirling, 180 first-year students did not have accommodation last year. Under-18s cannot rent in the private sector, care leavers and international students struggle to find guarantors for private contracts, disabled students very rarely find appropriate private accommodation that meets their needs and rents on campuses are increasing. Will the minister commit to researching and providing the data on those issues, and then convening a summit of university accommodation providers and student union representatives to tackle this widely occurring problem?
As I said in my answer to Liam McArthur, as autonomous i nstitutions the universities are responsible for student accommodation. It is not for me to interfere in their internal arrangements for how they deliver the resource allocation that they give student accommodation and how they dictate who comes first in their lists for that provision. I recognise that there were issues at the University of Stirling at the beginning of the last academic year, which followed a very significant increase in demand from students. Priority was given to students under the age of 18 and those with known health considerations, to deal with some of the issues that Mark Ruskell has raised.
Autonomous bodies such as the universities should deal sympathetically with every case when there is surplus demand that they cannot accommodate within their own provision.