As many of you may remember from rent negotiations, room banding has come up for several years as an issue, sometimes proposed by the JCR, more recently by the college.

Currently there are 10 bands of room. The JCR pressed for reducing the number of bands a long time ago as a means of making the differences between room rates smaller, and the system therefore fairer.

In more recent years, we have opposed it because on a practical level the JCR has discovered concealed rent rises in a previous room banding proposal, and we have argued that the extent of the difference between the rooms do justify 10 separate rates.

In trinity term, we were informed by the college bursar that the number of room bands would have to change next year.

However, we are conducting our own investigation as a JCR into the on-site college accommodation and will recommend our own proposal to be considered.

This will give us the chance to make a full rents proposal to college, with up-to-date information about the state of the rooms and accurate views on college rooms from the JCR (and no hidden rent rises!).

So Tim Hele (rents officer), Chen and I have ...

- Prepared a survey for JCR members to fill in (it has been emailed to you). The aim of the survey was to find out what JCR members consider the most and least desirable and important features of rooms, and to set the price accordingly. We got lots of responses so thank you for filling this in! Unfortunately I found out that because I don't have a 'professional plan' or 'unlimited annual plan' account it stopped taking responses after 100 replies so apologies if you tried to do the survey and it stopped working! However, its now working again for anyone who wants to take it and didn't take it last time ...

Click Here to take survey

- Arranged to examine every room in college before term starts so we have a detailed analysis of the state of college accommodation. Each room will be judged by its size, bathroom facilities, general quality, location and whether it is a shared or single set.

We will hopefully be able to provide the results of our investigation at the first JCR meeting of term.