Rethinking lobbying at the Hull Northern Voice Conference

A January highlight has been visiting Hull Students’ Union for their brilliant Northern Voice Conference.

Whilst university finances and funding are often at the forefront of SUs minds, it makes days like this a welcome break to get like-minded, passionate people in a room to chat policy, share best practice and think a bit differently. Huge credit to HUSU for making the event happen.

In one of the breakout sessions we talked through what we think the decision makers don’t know. For most of us in the sector we know the ins and outs of how student finance works, the housing crisis and student poverty. For decision-makers and particularly MPs, a lot of this is news to them.

We assume key decision makers on a local, regional and national level know as much as the sector does and puts out. When the sector lobbies hard, it works. You can see some of this in the similarities between the Secretary of States’ five key priority areas for higher education and UUK’s blueprint. But the gaps are wider when it comes to the student experience.

Heart and head

For those who I visited over summer for training you will have heard me recount the story of listening to the news whilst getting ready one morning and hearing a clip about the two child benefit cap. A short 20 second interview with a worried mother told me that she works 60 hours a week and felt like they were failing their kids.

I didn’t care about that policy selfishly but a short 20 second video of a worried mother and then some statistics explaining that policy made me care more in that moment than I ever had before.

Lobbying is often about statistics and facts. But it’s also about stories and emotions.

And when you combine the two you drive decision makers because you’ve made them feel and made them realise it’s not limited to one case study.

Lobbying is most successful when stories and stats make their way into university committees or in arenas more powerful like devolved government or Parliament.

At the second reading and committee stage of the Renters’ Rights Bill, stories were told about parents whose student children died by suicide and landlords were expecting rent. These stories told by MPs who drew on specifics of the bill made people feel and act and the current iteration of the bill prevents landlords from pursuing students for rent if they’re no longer a student.

Back to Hull

In the breakout session I split the room in two and asked them to consider how do you get decision makers to understand key student issues that they currently don’t, how do you get them to care and how do you get them to do something about it.

Half of the room imagined they were a SU or a group of SUs with an upcoming meeting with their mayor or local MP, their task to think about how they’d get them to understand, care and do something.

The other half of the room imagined they were a local combined authority with a bit more power and resources than may be realistic.

The task was to think big, get rid of the rule book. It’s easy to feel restricted by the realities of our contexts but thinking without restrictions allows us to aim for the moon and you know what, if we only get halfway there, at least we had that idea.

Team student unions

The SU tables had some great ideas about making people understand and care. Some suggested events inviting key decision makers with students and providing a space for students to engage with them, bringing them onto campus and into their domain, making them more accessible for students to share their experiences.

Many considered inviting MPs and mayors into SU buildings, showing them the realities of the student experience such as food pantries and presenting student stories and research.

Another group focused on housing and maintenance loans and would compare the cost of a wash in a standard home versus circuit laundry. And to get decision makers to understand the breadth and longevity of these issues, they’d compare experiences by years drawing on alumni.

A room favourite idea was “Wife Swap” with MPs living in student accommodation, working a full time job alongside their studies and trying to get student housing. Channel 4, there’s a TV series proposal in your inbox.

Finally, the last table proposed a “choose your own adventure story” for decision makers where, for example, if they made the wrong move and waited too long to find accommodation they would now need to commute. They’d gamify the hurdles students have to face to make explicit the injustices in the system.

If you’ve never seen it, have a look at this student life sim game put together by Helsinki Uni SUa few years back. They got uni officials, politicians and civil servants to play it so they better understood realities of student life today.

Team combined local authorities

Thinking big was one team who wanted to put price caps on PBSAs and minimum renting standards. They considered discounted or free travel for students across campus and into city centres. This is very common in Europe, for example in Poland it’s a student right for 50% off transport and in Slovakia students get free travel across Europe.

And as we’ve noted on the site before – in many countries once you’re no longer a student, you can stop paying rent on a student room.

They did consider discounts on food in supermarkets but in a bid to solve the problem rather than put a plaster on it, a proper maintenance loan that reflected inflation and cost of living would mitigate this.

Building trust was also highlighted as key for combined authorities to be able to solve some of these issues. Having open and transparent conversations with students was a key starting point.

Universities and local authorities talk a lot, there’s a lot of “civic” roles at universities but the dialogue misses out students. The more students are part of those conversations, the better.

Future focused accommodation plans would be required, as is common across Europe, to ensure universities don’t oversubscribe and bed plan.

With unlimited resources one group considered free transport, subsidised insurance, water and rent but also implementing students into the social housing system to make it easier for them to find accommodation and get things like council tax exemption letters.

A brilliant idea was also to employ students on placements or sandwich years in the local authority, not only boosting students’ voices as part of decision making but providing more students with jobs.

Bits and bobs

Other things that could work in these contexts might include student job strategies made in partnership with the university and local authority. This would identify student friendly jobs, jobs that are flexible and also those that are supportive for students’ professional development.

Shared buildings and spaces with the town and city can go a long way to improving “town versus gown” narratives whilst also making good use of derelict and unused spaces in towns and cities. In Katowice in Poland, we visited a refurbished bank that was a space for student communities, the university and the general public. In Antwerp in Belgium, students can book out study spaces across the city, including in IKEA.

Devolution is a huge opportunity for those on their way to being an Established Strategic Combined Authority but it is slow. In the meantime, the more big ideas that are attached to student stories and stats that can make their way to key decision makers across the country the better. The more students and their voices are integrated into decision making processes in their towns and cities where they live and study, the more they will feel like citizens, the more those places will work better for them and policy is made in their interest and not sidelined.