Student partnership is happening in Manchester, so why not in London?

Welcome is always the best opportunity to speak authentically with students, gauge what they’re excited by and their initial worries or concerns.

This year was no different. At Westminster Students’ Union, we had our range of well-attended welcome fayres, sip n paints, mindful pottery sessions, some craftivism, a treasure hunt (highly recommend!), and student council popped in as well.

But this year, the place I had the most impactful chat with students was when helping with our new run club. Whilst running around Regent’s Park, one of my working assumptions that I’ve had for a while was brought up by a number of students.

They told me that travel fares are too expensive, students stress about having to get the train in each day to study, and the student oyster card doesn’t offer the flexibility – or the savings – students need.

This makes a lot of sense. If students don’t feel like they can afford to come onto campus, this has very real, negative implications on their student experience.

The cost of participation is making student engagement much harder and students are missing out on everything we know makes their student experience great.

This is a crucial lens through which we must view our services at the SU and the university, in order to grow student communities.

To travel from Wembley which is in Zone 5 – where the highest concentration of Westminster students live – to our Marylebone campus in central London which is Zone 1 and home again, during peak time, you can expect to pay £8.80.

If you can go off peak – after 9.30am and before 4.30pm, or after 7pm – you can expect to pay £6.40. Or, with a student oyster card, you can get 30 per cent off with a travel card. A 7-day travelcard, however, costs £51.

Even going into university three times per week, students can expect to still pay around £25 for the privilege of in person study, visiting the library, and maybe attending a couple of events.

Meanwhile, we know from our termly surveys that 92 per cent of Westminster students – at some point in time – have not had enough money to cover essential costs for living and studying.

And yes, there are university-specific mechanisms that can, and do, alleviate some of the financial challenges students face. But there’s also a lot they can’t do.

Beyond the campus

Authentic student advocacy needs to look beyond the powers of the university. Where regional issues negatively impact the student experience, beyond the borders of the university site, students need to come together to create change.

Travel is one of the many challenges not specific to any given university, especially within London. Unlike places like Sheffield, where I was a student for five years, student populations are, typically, dispersed across multiple boroughs. For us, we have students living in 26 of the 33 London boroughs with a minimum 250 students per borough.

This is a similar story for nearly all universities based in London, and any university with a high percentage of commuting students often use a variety of transport methods to get to campus.

Transport for London is a devolved responsibility, as are housing and healthcare provisions. Additionally, Starmer’s new government has promised to devolve greater powers to local areas. This will include London, and the Greater London Authority are already developing a new London Growth Plan to drive economic growth, increase wages, and create more jobs.

There are approximately 500,000 university students living and studying in London. If we want to empower students to campaign on city-level issues – like housing and transport – we need to pool together our resources across the region. There’s a unique access point with devolved power that can and should be taken advantage of by SUs and student leaders.

With the London Student Partnership, we intend to do exactly that.

Inspiration from the North

The Greater Manchester Student Partnership is making waves in collective, regional advocacy work across multiple students’ unions. Bringing together the campaign work of each of the five students’ unions in Greater Manchester, they’re making a real difference on the city-level stuff, including housing, transport, city safety, mental health, by working with the Mayor of Greater Manchester and his team.

London must follow.

With the new government being slightly more positive to discussions about HE and students, the promise of further devolution, and a potential electorate of 500,000 people, it’s the right time to put our weight behind this project. We need to utilise the powers of the Mayor of London and Greater London Assembly to make community-specific, local changes which benefit students in London.

Every students’ union has something to offer when it comes to advocacy work, beyond the border of their respective university. We’re looking at a way to harness this, collaborate rather than compete, and ensure that every single student studying and living in London is considered during decision making processes.

At Westminster SU, we have re-envisaged the idea of a London Student Partnership and will be bringing this into reality when we first meet on Friday 8^th November.

We want the London Student Partnership to

Bring students’ unions in London together to identify common student challenges and co-create city-wide solutions.
Employ principles of collective action to influence city-level power holders on the issues that impact the experiences of students living and studying in London.
Provide opportunities for all student representatives to be heard by decision makers in London.

It’s a simple call-out. If you work for a students’ union in London and haven’t already got in contact, please do! We’re trying to make this as simple as possible, please just email me at s.dangerfield@westminster.ac.uk.

And for everyone else outside of London, I encourage you to be excited by the possibility of greater devolution and consider developing new or expanding existing partnerships across students’ unions at regional levels to make the town or city where students live and study better.

We’re more than happy to share our thinking and planning behind the London Student Partnership for you to follow, just like the GMSP did for us.