Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) receives a fee from five private accommodation partners for every new student it refers to their accommodation. The money is collected at the start of each academic year, and LJMU is committed by the formal agreements with these partners to ‘utilise such payment(s) towards student facing services’.
The biggest single category of expenditure is staff costs – chiefly the cost of employing senior students in all partner halls, the cost of an extra member of the welfare team to manage these staff and deal with welfare issues connected to and/or arising within the accommodation, and a contribution towards the costs of the university police officer.
More recent initiatives have been focused on assistance for students in hardship, including a limited scheme for lending disadvantaged new students their accommodation deposit, and an accommodation bursary scheme for continuing students.