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How can we solve the student accommodation supply problem?

25 April 2024

In our latest episode of Accommodation Matters, we get to grips with the student accommodation supply problem – and how we can solve it.

It’s the episode you’ve been waiting for…

An explosion in student numbers. A contraction in houses of multiple occupancy (HMO). Challenges to building new developments. Any one of these could have created a PBSA supply issue – but together, they’ve created a crisis in many cities.

Our expert panel looks at how this came about, the ways in which this is playing out in some of those cities, what the data is telling us for a longer term picture and – most importantly – some of the potential solutions to this issue.

Hosted by Jenny Shaw, this month’s panel includes:

  • Sarah Jones, Partner at Cushman & Wakefield
  • Iain Garfield, Director of Estates and Facilities at Newcastle University
  • Simon Jones, Group HE Director at Unite Students
  • Eleanor Whitford Kelly, Market Intelligence Manager at Unite Students

You can listen to the episode, or read the transcript, below.

 

‘How can we solve the student accommodation supply problem?’ episode transcript

Jenny Shaw: It’s August 2024. You’ve passed your exams and you’re going to university. Okay, it’s not quite the one you planned to go to, but still, you’re really excited to leave home for the first time and get started with student life, but then you hit an unexpected problem – because there’s nowhere for you to live.

Welcome to Accommodation Matters where each month we take a close look at important and emerging issues in student accommodation and the wider student experience.

Today we’re really going back to basics. We’re looking at the supply of student accommodation and the challenging circumstances in some university towns and cities and what this means for students, universities, and developers. But we’re not just looking at the problems. We’re also going to look at some of the solutions as well. And later this year, we’re going to take a broader look at that as well. So lots to look forward to.

With me in the studio, I have as usual a great panel of guests. We have Sarah Jones, Partner at Cushman & Wakefield. Hi Sarah.

Sarah Jones: Hi Jenny.

Jenny: And Eleanor Whitford Kelly, Market Intelligence Manager for Unite Students. Hi Eleanor.

Eleanor Whitford Kelly: Hello Jenny.

Jenny: Iain Garfield, Director of Estates and Facilities at Newcastle University. Hi Iain.

Iain Garfield: Hi Jenny. Hi everyone.

Jenny: And Simon Jones, Group Higher Education director for Unite Students. Hi Simon.

Simon Jones: Hi everyone.

Jenny: Sarah, can I come to you first? So, for the benefit of anyone who may be new to the sector, what has been going on in terms of supply of accommodation over the last few years?

Sarah: Thanks Jenny. So I wanted to go back to 2012, really, because I think that was really the start of the market that we have today in terms of both demand and supply for student accommodation.

So in 2012, the government made a change to student funding, which meant that universities could grow much faster than they ever could have before, and it started a competitive arms race between universities, which has really played out in this last 10 years. Some have really had a successful time, have grown hugely in terms of both their UK and their international student numbers and some less.

So what that means in the competitive world is obviously those universities that have grown really fantastically now suffer from an undersupply of student accommodation, and it’s not something that universities are able to fix on their own, partly because they’ve turned a lot of their income towards investing in academic and student experience rather than into accommodation provision.

This has led to the private sector market filling a gap and creating an opportunity for them really to provide new beds in all kinds of different ways on and off campus. That’s been fantastic for the universities because it supports those who have been growing, but it also gives a lot more choice of types of rooms and types of ways of living to students. So that has been fantastic.

But what we do know over time is that overall, and I got some key stats from our annual report from just the end of last year. In last 10 years, there were 300,000 more students that needed a bed, but only 200,000 new beds had been delivered, and that’s on top of any undersupply that might have been there before. So in fact, the supply has fallen behind and continues to do so in those university towns and cities that have been growing really successfully.

So then that leads onto what’s the economic situation post-Covid, post-Trussonomics et cetera, and 14 interest rate rises since December 21. And what that’s actually led to is a cost of funding which is far higher and under supply in terms of construction materials and costs of construction becoming more expensive, which means that the rents that need to be charged for any new build are now way higher than anything that might exist in the market before.

So adding to this affordability issue, you also have planning constraints where councils when they don’t know what’s happened in terms of these markets changing so quickly, they’re very dynamic places and in markets like Bristol, there just isn’t enough land to keep up with the development of new rooms. That then means it’s really hard to fix this problem of how do you get more accommodation.

Jenny: Yeah, of course change takes a lot of time when it involves building buildings which take a long time to put up!

Sarah: They do. There’s a lead time, isn’t there really? And when you can acknowledge there is a problem within a market and how quickly you can fix it, and it takes a lot of political will on behalf of a lot of organisations to actually develop that market.

Jenny: Yeah. So Simon, you’ve been in the PBSA sector for 16 years now, so I’m sure you’re going to recognise all of those different changes that Sarah has mentioned. How did it look from the perspective of a PBSA provider?

Simon: Very interesting times. Between probably 2010 through to 2020, there was a huge amount of additional supply came into the markets. Sarah’s commented on some of those markets. There was almost too much supply coming to the market, disrupting equilibrium which existed and then it took a period of time for things to settle down.

So I guess it was probably a choppy few years and I was looking after national operations at the time. We had several markets every year, which we were looking to get the occupancy back up to maximise occupancy where we could and they were different cities each year because of that disruption of supply coming in. Yeah, a highly volatile 10 years looking back, probably good fun, but at the time quite a bit of pain, lots of rapidly rethinking plans and strategy.

Jenny: So we’ve had 12 years of change and particularly over the last few years, the pace of change has been incredible. Lots of different underlying factors, disruption factors. Taking us to where we are now, Iain, what does this look like from a university context? What’s been happening in Newcastle, for example?

Iain: In Newcastle we’ve seen quite a reversal on our fortunes of accommodation in the city. Picking up on Sarah’s comments there of freedom and opportunity for universities to grow student numbers, that then raised the prospect of development opportunities for private accommodation providers and we saw a glut, if you like, of accommodation developments within the city for our student body to the point where there actually became quite a significant surplus of accommodation in Newcastle and those that had invested in sites that were adjacent to either our university or Northumbria University reaped the benefits of that because obviously location is very important for the students.

Some of the less attractive areas – not that the areas weren’t attractive, but the location and adjacency to the universities was less attractive to the students – those sites were carrying significant voids and this had been the case for a number of years until September 2022, which was the first time that we felt pressurised with regards to accommodation supply.

And I suppose really it was a bit of a perfect storm. The universities had grown partially for the point that Sarah’s made, but also the increase in number of 18 year olds from 2020 onwards, increasing interest in attendance at universities, but also the change in legislation and the growing in interest rates saw more and more HMOs withdrawn from the market, because there was fewer of them meant that the rental prices were increasing. But also then with the energy crisis, the financial benefits to students, the financial attractiveness of going into an HMO where previously that had been more cost effective than a PBSA, the differential was becoming less and less.

With the PBSAs being all inclusive, more and more returners were either staying in or moving into PBSA accommodation, which meant the market for our first year students, which is the market that as a university we were predominantly interested in and had a combination of our own beds and nominations agreements with some of the PBSA providers, we had more than sufficient beds to supply our first year market.

But with the pressures that came on in 2022, we had to work more closely with our local city council to see what accommodation we could make available to the student body for the two universities because the pressure was really coming on the holistic accommodation for students in a city like Newcastle.

What we’re finding was that 20% of the inhabitants of Newcastle during term time were students. So one in five of every inhabitant of Newcastle was a student. So it’s quite a significant body of requirement if you like, from a student accommodation point of view. The stats that we’ve seen coming through for 23/24 have shown that continued trend of returning students moving into the PBSA market. So it is becoming obviously increasingly difficult for our students to find accommodation.

Jenny: When you’re talking there, I’m just struck how changeable, volatile, how many different factors there are that go into this demand for student accommodation. And I’m wondering how as a university you develop strategy in such a volatile context, how do you deal with that?

Iain: I suppose there’s really two elements to that. From our point of view in estates and facilities and the accommodation service that we look after, we’ve got to try and ensure that we provide sufficient beds for our first years whilst thinking wider, as I say, for the whole student body. So we’re working with those local councils to ensure that we can, as much as possible, ensure that there’s a wide provision of student accommodation.

From the point of view of planning as to what those numbers are, to a degree, it’s a little bit speculative. Obviously we do plan, but there’s an element of speculation about it as well because our planning is based initially on our targets for how many students we actually want to attract to Newcastle, and Northumbria are the same. And this year we’ll be setting targets for 24/25 and 25/26 and plan on a three year cycle and then we translate that into monitoring applications that are coming into the university, both home students and international students.

We can then compare those applications on a year on year basis. So based on 23/24 and 22/23, what are the applications looking like for 24/25 and does that mean that potentially we’re getting the increases that we’re hoping for or the stability that we’re hoping for? And then we get a little bit more surety when those applications turn into offers. So how many offers have we put out? And then the next stage after that is how many offers have been accepted.

So it’s gradually firming up really how many of those students are actually going to come to us, but we’d never know how many students we’ve got until they actually turn up. So planning is actually quite challenging.

Jenny: Yeah, we are in very strange times, aren’t we Iain? And I think the last few months, the first time I’ve ever started to think, “Well, maybe post-qualification admissions might not be such a bad idea after all,” and I’ve never thought that before. So it just shows what strange days we are in.

Eleanor. I’d like to come to you now to talk about the outlook over the next few years in terms of demand. I know you’ve been working with Data HE on some data. What are you seeing? What are you predicting over the coming years?

Eleanor: Yeah, so we’ve had a couple of sessions with Data HE and we’ve been trying to forecast – although everyone will tell you not to even bother with the forecast, because there’s so much change at the moment with students and potential impacts – but we’re giving it a go with what we’ve got. The main headlines if you like, are that we think that the UK undergraduate number will still continue to go up because of the rising number of 18 year olds in the market. Even if the percentage that are actually going to university is smaller, that will still be an increase in numbers.

The real uncertainty is around international students. So there’s been a few changes to visa rules around dependents that has impacted Nigerian students and Indian students, particularly postgrads from coming to the UK. And we start to see those numbers drop possibly from this year. We could see from the UCAS data in January that the number of applications have dropped.

With Chinese students, for example, at the moment it looks like there’ll keep being rising numbers of Chinese students, but there are a lot of things at play that could impact that. So there’s the appeal of other markets – going to the US, going to Canada potentially. There’s also potential changes in policy that would impact the visa graduate route as well, which we would expect to impact student numbers.

So we’ve got a couple of things happening on the horizon that could impact numbers and those will really be felt in some cities more than others. So from what we’ve been looking at, especially around funding, we think that those higher tariff universities, those that require higher grades to attend potentially are less likely to suffer and they’re often in those bigger cities with a couple of universities there as well. So the same cities where there’s housing issues, we would see that continuing. So places like Manchester, Bristol, London where the number of students is going to carry on increasing.

What we’ve done is tried to measure the impact by looking at different scenarios that might happen and how that would impact the numbers. A lot of that’s around international student numbers being impacted. But another one which I know we’re going to get onto to talk about is that UK demand pool and whether affordability will be impacting UK demand, which is a bit of an unknown. I think it has to impact that pool if the student finance isn’t changed in some way, but how much it will is something that we’re still trying to work out.

So we have been really leaning on partners like Data HE to help us to understand that in a bit more detail and understand the funding as well for universities and how that’s impacted and going to be impacted over the next few years. So, a lot going on.

Jenny: I think a lot going on would be a great title for this podcast episode actually. That seems to be the theme. Sarah, can you tell us a bit more about those key cities that Eleanor was talking about? It does seem to be that there are particular issues in some cities whereas others they’ve still got empty housing.

Sarah: Well, it’s almost like it’s used in different ways. One piece of work, which I’ve had the privilege to work on was the Unipol Ten Cities survey and what that managed to do very clearly is show the story of markets where there’s been an undersupply of accommodation and where growth in rents has really been the story, places like Bristol, but then on the other hand, markets where there’s been lots of accommodation. And back to what Iain was saying, there’s a market where returning students live in PBSA, there’s been a lot of development over time. Places like Liverpool, Cardiff and Sheffield where rent increases haven’t been as marked.

And actually what it’s starting to do is show that there’s options really as to how people live and where they live. And it’s probably the first time that we’ve ever seen student accommodation being a really key factor in people choosing where to go to university and also how they want to study because I think within the UK student body, there is now this choice of – even if I am a fantastic student, do I want to go to my local Russell Group institution rather than go far away so that I can come home and commute to get my education?

Because as Eleanor says, there’s such a disparity now between the funding that people get and the ability to pay rents. This is really playing out in the market. You opened by saying “What is it that people can do?” And partly that is about looking at repurposing existing accommodation and looking at differentials in pricing points, looking at different stock types so that we can actually get a choice and continue to have that rent ladder to have value for money at all the price points.

Yeah, there is more visibility of those rental dynamics in markets, but I think there’s just so much more to be done from a consumer perspective to bring that to life.

Jenny: That consumer perspective is really interesting to me, Sarah, because you’ve sort of outlined some of the choices and different ways of thinking that students might have about where they go to university. I have to say I’m seeing this as a parent as well, and there might be a bit of a pressure to say, well maybe go to that city because it’s a bit cheaper. I think we just don’t know over time what impact that’s going to have on demand in the market, do we?

Sarah: You are right. And actually what the supply constraints will really do in the future because as Iain says, a university might take more nominations to deal with its own growth and its first year guarantee. What does this mean for returning students who want to live in PBSA or the people who can’t get a room in HMOs because the HMO market is contracting?

So the shape and nature of the student housing is changing and some of it is hidden from view because we don’t watch the HMO market with the same forensics as we do the PBSA market, but they are so interlinked.

Jenny: And I know that was something that happened in Glasgow, I’m sure it did in other places as well, but I think there was that big contraction quite quickly in HMO in Glasgow and then it put massive pressure on the purpose-built student accommodation.

Sarah: Well, I think in Scotland the specific renters policies of Scotland have probably impacted very heavily on the HMO market, but the Renters (Reform) Bill is still playing through. People don’t know exactly where that’s going to land or what really it will mean for HMOs, but what it is is just another straw on the camel’s back in terms of how hard it is to be a landlord. You’ve got so many pressures, the cost of your mortgage, the licencing, the accreditation, stamp duty and all the things about owning multiple houses, which means that that market is going to continue to change and it means that more people will rely on PBSA in future.

Jenny: Again, a lot going on. Eleanor, I don’t know if you’ve got any intel on HMO and changes in HMO availability in some of the cities.

Eleanor: Yeah, I think that the Renters (Reform) Bill is impacting landlords, but also different local councils are talking more about having their own particular legislations and rules around and strictness around the HMO licencing as well. So you can definitely see that playing out with the availability of accommodation.

We’re also seeing it with the pricing, so the pricing is getting closer and closer to PBSA pricing and if you factor in the bills, I think this has been mentioned before, it’s not that far off in some cities and actually it’s more regulated and you know what you’re going to end up with, things will get fixed. There’s a lot less issues with PBSA for the student than there might be with HMOs. That’s definitely coming through.

I think the main thing is that on the development side, HMO isn’t being developed so it’s not being filled with new properties for second and third years and above to live in. What is being built, if anything, is big blocks of PBSA accommodation, so you end up with more returners in those blocks. There’s also a lot of licencing laws around turning something from a single family occupancy into an HMO, which definitely have impacted the availability of HMO as well.

Jenny: Thank you. Sarah?

Sarah: It’s Article 4 Direction. So the Article 4 is something which is place in most of the university towns, cities in the UK, or in England and Wales. It means that you can’t expand your HMO markets without planning permission and planning permission is not likely to be granted. So all roads again lead back to PBSA for all kinds of students, because it is so difficult to increase the HMO market.

Iain: And some cities, like Newcastle for example, have local plans where they are looking to return traditional housing back from HMOs to traditional housing driving students more and more towards the PBSA market.

Sarah: In these, there’s a study that’s going on with Unipol and what they’re looking at is just the contraction in how the HMO market is behaving, because the further reaches of HMOs aren’t as attractive to students as they used to be because students now want a city centre lifestyle a lot of the time, and it naturally means that these houses are released into other ownership which helps graduates, it helps families, it helps all kinds of people in the city.

Iain: And it’s interesting to note the influence, shall we say, that parents have particularly on first years. Certainly what we find is that parents are particularly keen to see their students in university branded accommodation – if that’s not possible, certainly accommodation adjacent to the university, so their son or daughter has that diminished journey if you like, and therefore feels that they’re safer.

That’s probably translating more and more into returning students as well, that, “Okay, so where are you going to live next year?” And if it’s some not particularly attractive HMO in the middle of nowhere or staying in your purpose-built student accommodation that mom and dad have seen and like, that potentially could have an influence as well.

Jenny: I can absolutely understand that. So I’m really keen to briefly move on and talk about affordability, because I think that’s something that is on everyone’s mind in the sector and as students and as parents, how do we make sure that student accommodation remains affordable for students within the means that they have?

Now, Sarah, I know that you’ve been working for many years now with the accommodation costs survey, which is run by Unipol and NUS. What impact is constraint of supply having on affordability? Is it a straightforward pushing the price up or is it a bit more complicated than that?

Sarah: I think the main economic consequence of an under supply is always putting the price up, and I feel like that is something that’s playing out in markets like Bristol and Manchester. So yes, very much so, but can that go on forever? Big question and I think the uncertainties in how we are predicting demand this year are really going to start to tell. Rents can’t keep going up in the way that they have done these last few years.

Maintenance loan went up by 2.8%, but rents went up by 8% and if that happens year on year, you could see how the market will not be able to take that rent increase sustained over time. We want a rent ladder, we want choice. How do we get choice? Is it just about not refurbishing things and making poor stock? No, it isn’t. It’s about subsidising rents at a certain affordable level and actually we can learn a little bit from the London plan.

The London plan is not a perfect instrument, but within a new build, being able to say I’d like X percent of my rooms to be held at a certain rental level is something which is a really powerful tool which is being instigated not just in London but in lots of on-campus partnership projects as well. So we don’t want all of the rooms to be 190 or 210 pounds a week. We’d like some of them to be at 150 or 140 and even those levels are very expensive for some students.

I think there’s also something about this commuter market. If people are commuting, maybe they just need to be on campus for one or two days a week. What does that mean in terms of being more creative in the way that we provide accommodation? We’ve been mooting this idea of a student hotel so that you can kind of timeshare your room across a week every week on the same days with other people. So if you come on a Monday and go on a Tuesday, somebody might come in on a Wednesday and stay til Friday.

I think the market, just in terms of supply, it’s not going to be possible to maintain the current fixed way of working. I think there is room for some creativity in terms of thinking of these alternative ideas because I think there will be a significant problem in the UK affordability long term.

Jenny: And it is so interesting to me that some of these ideas, the student hotel radically more affordable product. They’re not new ones. We’ve been talking about them for at least 12 years as far as I know, but it feels like now we’re being sort of funnelled into having to do something different or think about alternatives about new ways to deliver what students need.

Sarah: I think we’re getting to a crunch point. I think people have always had these ideas, but it’s almost, we can see it now. It’s not just a hypothetical anymore. It’s these things are real decisions that real households are making and they have to be responded to.

Iain: As well, it’s also about having a variety of product. I mean Sarah mentioned there the rent ladder, where every year we review our rent ladder. It’s largely around the variety of products that we have here at Newcastle of our own accommodation and also the accommodation that we attract through our nominations partners.

And that product can vary from location, as I mentioned before. Obviously the accommodation which we have on our campus, if you take for example Parkview Student Village if you like, that’s our top of the range product because it’s fully en suite has amenities adjacent to it, is right on campus and therefore holds that premium price. Whereas some of our accommodation is wash hand basin and shared bathroom. That is an alternative product.

Some of the nominations agreement partners that we have have accommodation relatively adjacent to our campus. Generally the PBSA market tends to deliver the shared kitchen diner but fully en suite. So really the variety of that product is location and as I mentioned, some of the more peripheral sites are less attractive and therefore attract a lower rental cost. So it is having that variety of product I think as much as anything to enable that rent ladder to continue.

Jenny: So in terms of innovation, I think most people listening to this podcast will be aware that Newcastle University and Unite Students have just recently announced a joint venture around the Castle Leazes site, a long-term joint venture to redevelop that site with modern student accommodation and it’s still a type of deal that’s quite rare within the sector. It seems like a quite futuristic way of working from where the sector is at the moment.

Iain, I’m really curious to know what the circumstances were that prompted you to consider a joint venture of this type rather than doing something a bit more standard.

Iain: So you mentioned the Castle Leazes site and we’ve been working with the conundrum of Castle Leazes for quite a number of years. That conundrum being it’s a 1960s accommodation block originally developed as a fully catered facility.

So all of the bedrooms were wash hand basin and shared bathroom with no amenities/facilities within the confines of the accommodation blocks, no standard kitchen living diners like you get in modern PBSA. We’ve undertaken some conversion, although it has been quite challenging due to the structure of the building. So really the long-term future of the site was always at risk and we finally came to the conclusion that the only way really to take the site forward would be a full demolition and rebuild.

Now back to the point Sarah was making about the challenges of construction in the modern financial situation. If we take Park View Student Village for example, which was developed and opened in 2018, that was a site that was developed for approximately £60,000 per bed with a borrowing capacity that the university had at the time of around about 2% interest rate.

We’re currently working on a national average of about £110,000 a bed when we’re seeing that number increase on a almost weekly basis and interest rates floating around about 5-6%. So you can see that the development of that site was going to be challenging compared with five years ago.

So we looked at the various financial options and self-build was an option. Obviously universities have got a strong covenant for borrowing capacity. We could have developed the site ourselves, but again, as Sarah mentioned early on, the universities have competing priorities on that capital funding. Most universities have a net zero carbon target which needs significant investment. We’ve talked about development of the student experience and student growth, so academic facilities and developments are a priority as well.

But at the end of the day, our core business is teaching and research. The core business of organisations like Unite is providing student accommodation and it therefore made sense to have conversations with the PBSA providers to see what options were available around funding and operation. We didn’t just want to fund this, we wanted to look at how we funded and operated the site.

We’ve had a relationship with Unite Student for a number of years now. So we entered into dialogue with Unite Students and other the PBSA providers as well, but ended up taking the conversation with Unite further down the line and initially we entered into a memorandum of understanding, just to take the idea of a joint venture further and establish whether or not this is something that was attractive to both parties and ultimately attractive to our student body.

And I think that benefit of having a facility that would be effectively a university site branded as a university facility and marketed through the university’s accommodation team, yet managed and run by a PBSA provider who know better than we do how to run purpose-built student accommodation, the benefits of having a university and the benefits of having a PBSA provider working together in a joint venture really brought forward far more benefits than individually each organisation could provide.

So we’ve now entered into a framework agreement working towards a JV once we get planning approval contractor on site and starting to move the project forward. And so far everything looks really positive. The teams are working really well together. We’re just in the final throes of appointing our main contractor. So far so good.

Jenny: Simon, what was it that brought Unite to the table for this partnership?

Simon: We’ve been long-term partners with Newcastle University. We’ve been talking to the university regularly as a nominations provider, but also at a strategic level, the Vice Chancellor and our Chief Exec meeting regularly talking about the sector, talking about the market and the discussions around the future of Castle Leazes and considerations around whether it was to be redeveloped and when it might be redeveloped. Those conversations go far as back as sort of 2015, 2016. So we’ve always been interested in supporting, exploring a different route and maybe being the partner in terms of the redevelopment.

Unite’s been looking at a viable solution to work in partnership on campus with universities for probably eight or nine years. And we believe now we have a model which works. We reintroduced that to the university 12, 14 months ago and we’ve had very productive discussions since, and of course we’re delighted that we were able to become the partner to take that forward for redevelopment.

Another key aspect of working with Newcastle University, that Castle Leazes will be demolished and that effectively takes 850 towards 900 beds out of commission for the period of the build. What we’ve been able to do is to provide substitute beds in the city centre and our existing assets through nominations, agreements, decanting the students, making sure that the supply of accommodation for the first years and international students is met and then those students will then take up residence in the new Castle Leazes when it reopens in 2027 and 2028.

So it’s a real feature of that partnership, the ability to support on the decant, provide that sort of seamless provision of the same volume of accommodation and also making sure that Newcastle University can continue to grow in the years of the redevelopment.

Jenny: Are there any particular learnings or reflections on the process so far? Anything you’ve taken away from it?

Iain: I think probably one of the keys is that the values of the university and the values of Unite Students align really strongly. So the relationship that’s been developed isn’t one of, if you like, financier and client, which a more traditional funding arrangement would be. That value alignment’s been the key to the successful relationship.

Simon: From the outset, we’ve always looked at this as a partnership, both of us working together, aligned values, aligned objectives, aligned outcomes for the students and supporting both the growth of Newcastle University and also the growth of Unite in the market. I think what we’ve managed to do is be hugely empathetic with each other, very respectful of our respective strengths, and then bringing the best of both parties into that – forming that partnership, co-creating the solution, adjusting where we needed to, and being really, really clear on the critical objectives for the university.

Jenny: That’s great to hear. So thank you to all my guests today and a really big thank you as well to you for listening. Our audience is really starting to grow this year, which is fantastic to see. And if you enjoy the show, which if you’ve made it this far, I think you probably do, and especially if you find it useful, please do share it with colleagues, share it on social media, and if you have any ideas for future episodes, then do get in touch. You can usually find me on LinkedIn.

We are going to be back next month with a brand new episode. Very excited about it. So until then, enjoy the spring weather, take care in all the April storms and we will see you really soon. Goodbye.

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