Huddersfield, Storthes Hall Park

Okay, I'm no going to lie to you Storthes Hall isn't brilliant, in fact ive had a really rubbish experience with them, when i first moved in the bathroom was dirty, with muddy footprints, mould and silverfish but after giving it a good clean, it was not that bad, the beds are loud and very uncomfortable but its never going to be like being at home.

The Bathroom:

The whole bathroom floods when you shower due to the shower curtain not working as the fan blows inwards as well as outwards, so don't keep anything that you don't want to get ruined in the bathroom, the showers aren't brilliant they either the water is either boiling hot or freezing but you will figure that out for yourself. Report to maintenance and you will get some help.

The Bedroom:

The desk is big and the pin-board is big too, the wardrobe is at a funny angle so it was hard to open and see what you had in there but its okay.

The Kitchen:

BRING PANS THAT ARE SUITABLE FOR CERAMIC HOBS. ive burnt and ruined so many pans on the old and useless hobs which are included, the fridges and freezers aren't too big but if you agree with your flatmates on how your going to share the space you will be fine. the kitchen chairs aren't too comfy but they will be fine for the price you pay.

The Staff: Dont hesitate to ask or help or tell the staff whats going on, i had flatmates which smoked weed all the time so they came and spoke to them, i then moved flats and the process was easy and i wish i had done it sooner.

in all honesty, i wouldn't reccormend living here but if you end up here, make the best of a bad situation, go to the venue, take your own bottles (not advertised but is allowed), make memories.

Wi fi practically non existent, floors dirty,mould on walls,ovens ancient,bar (2016) closed for refurbishment,silver fish on carpets in bedrooms, Windows on ground floor can't be locked when open so unable to ventilated room, after final inspection clean no damage found but monies kept from deposit for items out of our control in a nut shell find somewhere else.

Not only was my experience here awful, but I repeatedly found that things were broken around my flat. When I went to the reception desk to report this, they said they would have anything broken or missing fixed. Not only did they not do this, but they also charged me for everything that was broken or missing in my flat. Non of my reports to the reception desk were recorded, therefore I had no evidence to defend myself against any of the charges.

I am a first year student and ever since I got here I noticed horrible things. The shower burns you or is freezing, no inbetween, and your whole tiny en-suite is a wet room as it always floods.

The carpets are GROSS! Stained, gum stuck in it, crumbs, holes, they don't clean them, and another thing! Our hoover doesn't work and we were accused of stealing the filter out of it!

Theres marks on my walls, the bed is like laying on a bed of mushy lumpy potatoes. Now and again all you can smell is the dirty poo drains from outside, theres no sitting room, just plastic chairs in the kitchen, two freezers that are tiny and one broke, one really dirty sink that can never clean, black outs all the time.

And the noise! Ugh, people think students have to party 24/7 and if not you shouldn't be at uni, it's a joke, people smoke indoors, the stairwells look like entrances to drug dens and council flats

The water IS YELLOW! They try so hard to fix it but never do, can't drink, wash myself or my pots or cook with water.

Ovens are old and take so long to heat up, boiling water takes an hour, the staff aren't helpful! I burned my hand once when a member of staff handed me a scolding cup of hot chocolate and they laughed and said; 'wow cant give anything away for free without complains'

The people that live here are mean, can't complain about anything without abuse.

Rats around the site, 20 minute bus journey to the uni, if it snows you're fecked.

Only decent things in the room is the large desk and pin boards.

Heating is medicore, doors just squeak like hell and slam so loud!

It's a dirty, noisy and careless place.

It is hard to know where to start to write about all the negatives of living at Storthes! I'll start with the reason I booked there. The University must be in some sort of lucrative contract with the owners of Storthes as there is no reason anyone would think this is the best option for accommodation in Huddersfield if they were aware of the other options. There are numerous other accommodation halls all within about 5 mins walk of the university campus which I had never heard anything from the university about. I feel quite mislead that the university did not give a full overview of the options - it clearly shows that they are more interested in making money than that their students are happy/satisfied with where they have to live. Storthes is located (completely unnecessarily) 5 miles away from the university. This means that you have to catch buses to and from university. On an open day, they will tell you that the bus is usually free, and in the day time, it is. However in the evening or at weekends, the buses run very infrequently and you generally have to pay for them, and every time you go out in the evening (returning after 23:00) you have to pay for a taxi back - which all adds up over a year as living in the other halls in the town, you can just walk back. When you get to storthes, it doesn't improve either as the site seems like it has not been renovated for decades - to say it's grotty and poorly maintained is a massive understatement. Issues with hot water, or even clean water are common, and the heating system is not good. this is not helped by the fact that most of the fixtures and fittings are fitted poorly, for example, when my window is closed, the curtains still blow in the wind because there is that much of a draft. They also gave me the most uncomfortable and grotty mattress I have ever slept on, and it's only a single bed. The bathrooms are also horrible, as they are wet rooms with shower curtains. Wet rooms can be fine if they are installed properly, however this is Storthes so obviously nothing is installed properly. The fan in my bathroom was so useless that mold started to grow on my bathroom ceiling. The kitchen that you are shown on an open day will not bare any resemblance to the one they will give you. the one they will give you will be scruffy and have really old ovens, hobs, etc. and they don't give you much space.

Storthes is actually quite an expensive place to live considering how horrible it is - you can get a room at the much more conveniently located Firth Point for roughly the same price. this cost is added to by the company which owns it who are VILE! they will pick up on any tiny detail, literally any minor accidental damage to the flats and they will charge you through the nose for breech of contract. the fines don't stop at minor accidental damage either, if your friends or family come to visit and they are accidentaly parked in a place which they are not supposed to be parked in, within literally about 5 minutes they will have a £100 fine on their windscreen. when you complain to them, they either blame someone else - e.g it's not our fault the water is running brown from your tap, it's our water suppliers fault. and sometimes, they even try to blame YOU the resident. When I reported the mold on my ceiling, they tried to blame me for not ventilating my room properly! They set up a facebook page each year, and hope that no prospective future students look at it, as it is basically just the residents complaining about how awful Storthes is. they say that it is the facebook page for duscussing things about Storthes but the administraitors (Storthes staff) ignore any major issues raised, and any basic ones they just post "report it to reception".

The laundry, onsite bar and onsite shop are an absolute rip off - they basically charge hugely inflated prices just because they can as it is the only shop for miles around. they also charge you £1.85 for cash withdrawals which is ridiculous when often the reason for getting cash out is so that you can pay for bus fares.

As far as I can tell, the businiess model for Storthes Hall is to run a poor service at minimal cost, fine the residents as much as possible until they leave, and force them into a contract which ties them in for a whole year - you can't back out of it like you can with some other places, you have to pay the whole years rent even if you decide to leave after a few weeks. They get away with it as each year the university (wrongly) advises people to book there saying its where all first years go (it's not - it's probably less than half of 1st years), and then do the same each year, as each naive year group gets mislead into booking there again and again. The fact that they have to reduce the re-bookers rate to £69 and even then no one re-books says it all realy!

My advice would be not to bother even looking round it as there are many far better options in the centre of the town. they will all be full of 1st year students so don't think you'll be missing out by not being with 'most of the 1st years'! and also I will just add that all the student halls in Huddersfield are en suite. better options include:

Aspley Halls (They are expensive but nice)

Saw Mill (Similar to Aspley)

The Castings (Similar to Aspley)

Snow Island (Cheaper - similar price to Storthes, but still in a great location)

Firth Point (Similar to Snow Island)

I would reccommend searching for these accommodation sites on Google (Because the university won't tell you about them) and booking a viewing for when you come for your open day.

Congratulations if you had the stamina to reach the end of this rant/review! If I can save one person the misery of living at Storthes, it will have been worth it!

Thanks for reading!

The majority of people living at Storthes Hall Park are tricked into it, thinking it's the only choice other than Ashenhurst for Huddersfield University, IT IS NOT. The uni doesn't advertise the nice halls in town, right next to the uni, similar prices and MUCH better quality of living. So before you sign up for Storthes, check out The Castings, Aspley, Saw Mill and Snow Island!!!!! I wish I had!

Positives

Storthes is in the middle of Yorkshire countryside so the surroundings are nice, decent views from your windows that you wouldn't have in town, no noise from traffic. The community feel is great as there's so many students in one place, it's great for your social life, especially in freshers fortnight.

The bedrooms are a good size and you have your own bathroom.

Negatives

You're 6 miles out of town, meaning you have to rely on buses to get anywhere. Most of the time they're reliable but there's been occasions where one just hasn't even turned up meaning people miss lectures.

All of the furniture and appliances are outdated and old fashioned, often falling apart as it's all so cheap. Mattresses are thin, on top of an iron frame.

There's horrible silverfish in your bathroom despite how much you keep it ventilated, they even make their way into your room, I saw one on my bed once..

Staff will throw fines at you for the smallest/non-existent things, our flat's been fined because they thought they could smell stale cigarettes in our kitchen, probably from previous years not us.

There's regular problems with tap water coming out brown, it's barely drinkable people are getting ill from it and not being able to shower in it. The shower's are quite good in terms of pressure, but very unreliable in temperature, mine's usually warm enough to comfortably shower in twice a week, the rest of the time it's cold. Most people have mould in their bathrooms.

There's a shop in the student village, but it's very overpriced with a limited selection of food which is often found to be mouldy and out of date. There's a cash machine but it charges you. The wifi is pretty inconsistent. You can expect to get bombarded with phonecalls, texts and letters from Digs desperately begging you to rebook with them for the next year, which anyone would be mad to.

The kitchens are in desperate need of sofas, all you have are plastic primary school chairs to sit on. As someone who has experienced halls at another uni, I know that Storthes is terrible in comparison to other halls, such basic levels of living.

Basically don't pay £100 a week for this awful place, i'm counting down the days until I can leave.

Storthes hall is pretty brilliant in that you are constantly surrounded by interesting people, the setting is gorgeous. There are parties most nights, beautiful countryside to walk or ride around.

The actual accomodation however is terrible.The windows are not always fitted properly, you cannot always get hot or cold running water, for the past few weeks a load of people have had nothing but brown water running through taps and toilets, these people have been given alternate accomodation in other blocks now, but even that took far too long. The heating automatically shuts off at night, which is to be expected but considering that the windows aren't always fitted properly it can get very cold. The showers block incredibly easily, people are always getting mouldy bathrooms and walls and shower curtains. There are silverfish and a friend of mine always gets allergies whenever he stays in any room. The worst thing however is the digs staff, they very very rarely deal with problems, and are constatly handing out fines, often for things that can't even be proved. Room inspections leave doors unlocked. Repair men leave rusty nails on the floors.

Yet the digs team have the cheek to constantly fine people because their rooms smell of smoke, or because something gets broken, that was in terrible condition anyway,

After all this I would still suggest it to a friend, but only a friend who was happy slumming it to be around good times and parties.

I would not recommend Storthes Hall to my worst enemy. The quality and condition of bedrooms/bathrooms/shared areas are absolutely vile.

Good points:

Nice surroundings (greenery etc), being situated outside of the town centre isn't entirely a bad thing, rooms are a decent size compared to some of the other accommodations I viewed at different universities, the large number of first years meaning it is rather sociable. I have a very big window which with the nice view outside is lovely to have, as well as big windowsill which I appreciate. Though ugly, there is enough bedroom furniture provided such as shelves and drawers. Whilst many people complain about the buses I don't see too much of a problem with them, you know before moving here that you will have to get a 20 minute bus to go to uni/town. I've never had any problems with buses not turning up or running particularly late.

Bad points:

Moving here is quite possibly the worst mistake I have ever made. My room was dirty upon arrival, the walls were stained and just manky - reported this to reception on day of arrival and was promised my room would be repainted as soon as was possible, I've now been living here for 27 weeks and not yet has my room been painted. The fire safety closer on my door was also broke upon arrival, this was reported immediately, also not been fixed yet. My carpet has been stained since I arrived, and I imagine Storthes will try and blame this on me and keep my deposit.

Buses: you do have to pay for the buses after 6 o'clock which is very annoying, and they do only run once every hour at the weekend, and finish at 11.

Londis: Whilst it is convenient it is very expensive and have had experiences where I have bought food and returned to my flat to find it is inedible (mouldy etc).

Kitchen/shared facilities: My flat houses 7 people, there are enough cupboards in the kitchen for us to have one each with a few left over, considering the size of these cupboards this isn't enough space to store food (baring in mind we were advised not to keep food in the bottom cupboards as they are often visited by rats and other vermin). We have two very small fridges and freezers, which are DEFINITELY not big enough for 7 people. We received one kettle and a microwave between the 7 of us, we had to provide our own toasters. We were provided with two henry hoovers (one of which was already broken when we arrived), and one broom and mop. I've been lucky enough to live in Cinderhill and so have had no issues with water (although it never runs cold so if you want water for drinking you must bottle it and leave it in the fridge, otherwise it is warm and frankly tastes disgusting, you also have to leave a glass of water for about 5 minutes to settle unless you want to drink cloudy water), however many other flats often have their water completely cut, going up to two days with no water in their flats (not even in the toilets, meaning you are unable to drink water/shower/wash your hands/or even use the toilet), I have also seen many other flats experience brown/black water running from their taps, which again takes place for days at a time before being fixed. The wifi isn't the best, there are often many problems with it being down but it runs fine for me when there aren't issues.

Laundrette: I've never used the laundrette as I live close enough to home to take my washing home on a weekend, and cannot afford to use the laundrette. The facilities look dirty and it is ridiculously expensive to wash and dry a load.

My bedroom: The bed is smaller than a single, both in length and width. I have been luckily enough to get a comfy mattress but my flat mates have had to have their mattresses swapped due to how uncomfy they were. Under the mattresses are metal frames over a concrete floor which is full of dirt, mould and spiders. Ever since moving in I have found every day once I return from uni my walls have covered in mould, my room is so damp that water drips down the walls all night long, and despite cleaning the mould off of the walls every single day, it is still covered with thick mould a day later. The only thing Storthes have ever offered to do to fix this is to paint over it, which does not address the problem as the mould grows back over the wall, and since I've been waiting for my walls painting for 27 weeks now, I also can't see that happening any time soon. My room constantly smells foisty, and now so do all of my clothes. The curtains are vile, it wouldn't have been difficult to get plain curtains, but instead we have very tatty, patterned ones that look like they've been here since the 70s. The notice boards are very dull and make the room look ugly, but they do allow you to decorate some areas of the walls how you please, with photographs and posters and what not, without being fined for leaving blu tac marks on the walls. My wardrobe was broken when I arrived, with the back falling through. Other than this the storage provided in bedrooms is okay. The furniture is all particularly outdated and does not allow the room to look homely in anyway.

My bathroom: The drain in the shower is very unreliable, many times I turn my shower on and it does not allow the water to drain, flooding the whole bathroom. Mould has grown on my shower curtain, Storthes have refused to replace this, and I have been warned if I replace the shower curtain my self this is a 'breach of my contract' and I will not get my deposit back come the end of the year. Many of my flat mates have experienced issues with silverfish living in their bathroom, in some cases moving into the bedroom and leaving them with bites during the night, luckily enough I haven't experienced this.

Last but not least Storthes staff and management are particularly rude and poor at dealing with issues on their end, but any problems from yourself and you're sure to receive an extortionate fine almost immediately and often unfairly.

Living in Storthes Hall could be compared to living in prison, but less luxurious.

I visited both my room type, kitchen and facilites before arrival so i knew what to expect with the quality/range of facilites.

As a first point, I cannot complain about the quality of my room, but I expect this is only because I am paying more money for a nicer room than the other people in my flat have been provided with. The quality of my room was fair, I don't have carpet so my floor did not contain the stains I've seen other reviews making points about. The bathroom was clean on arrival - clearly treated with respect by the last resident. There was quite a lot of dust but it only took 5-10 mins of cleaning, but I guess that's to be expected.

I find the kitchen to be too small, based on the fact that 8 people are expected to share it comfortably. Fair enough, we all have a cupboard each, but it is way too small to keep a decent range/amount of things in, and the fridge/freezer space isn't adequate.

I don't have a problem with my flat/room but some of the states I've seen friends rooms in is disgusting. Mould everywhere - bathroom, walls, carpet etc, which is more than what could have reasonably been caused by them taking that we've lived here two months.

My main issue with this place is the people living here and the staff. storthes is essentially full of jumped up, just turned over 18's with no respect for anyone else and who are literally just here to go mental. So much noise on a night when you're trying to sleep, or study, with disrespectful people slamming doors, blasting music so loud you can hear it through floors, and accross the place, and generally shouting/screaming before and after going out. The staff are unhelpful as well. I sent an email to one of the admins of Storthes and was provided with the helpful response of "I should have reported it at the time" - after having dealt with being woken up every night for over a week, I was hardly in the mood to go out at 5 in the morning and freezing cold and complain to security. We are treated quite frankly like children being patronised and the staff c,early don't care that much.

My friend has also had his room entered with no prior notice and fined a large sum of money for absolutely no reason whatsoever, which is an invasion of privacy and quite frankly theft.

Also, every Wednesday when the fire alarms are tested, out hot water boilers break and we are left without hot water until it is fixed. Surely they can come up with a way of testing the alarms without breaking people's hot water supplies.

I will not be returning next year. It's a shame that such a nice looking place is ruined by the people.

Don't move here. Really, just don't bother. I moved here in September 2012. When I first moved here I didn't know what to expect as this is the first time I've lived in student accommodation. If I was asked to write down the good and bad points, I honestly don't think I would have anything to put down for good points. When you come around on open days, they show you specific rooms that they have purposely kept in good condition and they don't show you what the rest of the place is like.

Firstly, one of the biggest problems: Transport. I really can't describe how important this is. Firstly, some idiot decided to build Storthes Hall miles away from the town. Not only does this cut you off from everything, it means that you have to catch the terrible bus service from Storthes to the Uni. The bus also ONLY goes to Uni, meaning if you wanted to get a bus somewhere else in town, you have to go to Uni and then walk it. The bus is meant to come every 30 minutes, but that's only on a good day. The drivers are incredibly rude and inconsiderate. They drive badly constantly, speeding round corners, accelerating up to go over speed bumps etc. The times the bus arrives at Uni is also not in sync with when lectures start, meaning you have to arrive 35 minutes early or 5-10 minutes late. The buses are constantly crowded way over the safe limits every morning, and often the queue to get the bus stretches all the way up the road. Being late for morning lectures really is unavoidable during the morning thanks to the bus service.

The appliances are all incredibly old and barely working. The kettles needed cleaning out when we moved in because otherwise we was waiting about 10 minutes just for it to boil. The fridges and freezers are 16 years old according to the labels on them and are simply too small for flats of 7/8 people. The amount of space in them is ridiculous, people are always having to use other people's shelf space. The ovens and hobs were in a disgusting mess when we moved in that needed cleaning.

The rest of the kitchen is awful. When I moved in I spent a good few hours cleaning it all down, as it was obvious the cleaners never did over the summer. The lack of good cupboard space is really annoying and often causes tension when people who move in late end up with a tiny section of someone else's cupboard. The table that comes with in the kitchen has god awful infant school/ikea style chairs that make you feel like a kid when you sit on them.

The bedrooms are just as bad. They have terrible wall paint colour choices, from a pale pink to vile bright yellow. The curtains are stained and rotten, with mine having moth holes in when I first moved here. Many people have sick stains in their carpet when they move in, meaning that the "cleaners" never clean the rooms over summer. The mattress is obviously very old as the springs stick into your back every night. It is the same for everyone I've talked to, no one has a decent mattress. The windows in the rooms are stupid, you have to leave them unlocked all the time, the moment you lock them you have to go to reception to get someone from maintenance to come unlock it for you. What's all that about? The chairs that come with the rooms are crappy school type chairs that need cleaning as bad as the carpets. The on-suite shower room is OK but comes with damp and rotten shower curtains.

PLEASE don't move here, it's really made this part of my first year unenjoyable. There is other accommodation that is actually inside Huddersfield and one of them is literally across the road from the Uni. Look into one of them if you plan on having a nice place to stay after a hard day at university, coming back to Storthes after just means you can't relax and unwind, your constantly reminded of what a dank and horrible place your living.

(Also, as I write this, yet again the "cleaning chemicals" have leaked into the main water supply meaning it is undrinkable and not even safe for having a shower in. This sort of water related problem happens at least once a month here.)