For more than 45 days Kingswood residents suffered from a loss of heating and hot water resulting from an unexpected breakdown in the boilers that serve the accommodation. The breakdown occured on the 24th of December, luckily the majority of students had already left for the Christmas holiday. However, the students who remained, many of whom are international, spending Christmas away from their families, described the incident as a ‘shocking’ and ‘frustrating’ thing to happen.
Throughout the Christmas break, the remaining students had to put on their thick clothes to protect from the cold weather. Temperatures at night reached as low as -7 C coating Kingswood in a white frost. As the situation started getting worse, some students were offered a place to live temporarily in one of the main campus’ halls until the issues were solved.
Kingswood administrators faced complaints from the students returning from the Christmas holidays, and in an attempt to appease the students, raised the food discount from the usual 50%. Even though many students claimed that food was served in smaller portions, they admit that staff at Kingswood appeared to handle the anger of more than 200 students well.
New boilers have now been installed, and hot water and heating was restored on the 8th of February. Despite the fact living standards are back to what they were, students at Kingswood are still looking for some sort of compensation or reduction in their rent to compensate for the failures they experienced. News as to whether this will be granted has yet to be released.