Bavesh Blogs

This is pretty much everything I would have wanted to know when I picked Stamford Street Apartments on the accommodation portal – I hope it helps you out! I lived in a non-refurbished flat of eight (£204pw) for the 40 week contract. I also got to go into a refurbished flat and if you’d like to see pictures and videos of that, all you need to do is scroll to the bottom of this page!

If you want to see a review of my first year of Medicine at King’s, click here 🙂

A Video Tour of My Room, Ensuite and Our Kitchen

My room and ensuite: https://youtu.be/yqySgHGIv0o

Kitchen: https://youtu.be/1oGR6g1SnJQ

I took these videos just before moving out. I swear I didn’t live like this!

I’ve left some details out from the review but the two images below should help (things may change next year).

Bedroom

The room isn’t huge, but I think you can make it work quite well, especially if you add a full length mirror. Even if you don’t it will at least still be cozy. Add a few vines, LEDs and posters and you can really make it your own.

If you face the courtyard, like I did, the view can be pretty nice. If you face the back of SSA, though, it can be a bit of an eyesore.

The desk is a nice size to work or eat ramen whilst watching Netflix and the spinny chairs are surprisingly comfy. The bed is SOOO comfy for what it is but it’s a bit small if you’re a tall person. There’s quite a bit of storage room in the cupboards and drawers and you can stuff luggage or boxes above the wardrobe or under the bed.

The WiFi really wasn’t great in my room and it constantly had to be re-authenticated or switched from one to the other, but it could comfortably stream Netflix or lectures when it did work 🙂

I personally never turned on the heater (subtle flex, I know) and always had the windows open but the heaters in the other rooms made them toasty real quick (some of them are a bit harder to turn off and control, though).

Ensuite

Ok. I don’t really know if you can call the wetrooms at SSA ensuites, but it’s pretty nice to have your own place to shower and your own toilet (I know I wouldn’t have traded it for the world – Wolfson gives me chills). Apart from when it wasn’t working, the water pressure from the shower was really good but the hot water tends to go cold after a dozen minutes which is annoying if you’re washing your hair. None of the extractor fans seemed to work and many bathrooms started flooding as the drains are fairly small (I had to scoop wads of my previous tenant’s hair – gross!). The walls are plastic so it’s hard to put things on there, but there is a small storage shelf near the sink and a shaver outlet near or inside the bathroom light. The bathroom mirror is quite flattering too 🙂

Another thing I should mention is some of the wetroom floors were a lot nicer than others, some rooms didn’t have toilet lids and some floors directed water into the drainhole better – you just got lucky or not. But overall, I was pretty happy with it.

Kitchen

The kitchen was pretty nice – induction hobs, decent fridge space (even for eight flatmates) and they even eventually fixed our extractor fan (albeit it did become annoying as it was automatic and often made a loud noise). There is quite a bit of storage space, but one annoying detail was my being left without a cupboard and sometimes having to bring in our own chairs as there weren’t enough for all eight of us. The cleaners help both clean the kitchen (but please don’t leave it a mess – your flatmates will thank you) and take out the recycling and glass bin, but you and your flatmates are responsible for taking out the general waste bin. You’ll also hopefully find a Henry Hoover and a nice view here if you face the courtyard 🙂

Communal Areas

The courtyard is really nice.  It’s a lot smaller than the one at GDS but there are two big table spaces where you can all sit and enjoy a drink or even watch the stars with someone special (they did kick us out once despite it being before 11pm and us being quiet, which was annoying). You will occasionally hear screaming at 2am from the courtyard, which isn’t so nice.

Sadly, the common room and kitchen area didn’t get a lot of love this year but occasionally there will be groups of people (more so cliques imo) there watching footy on the huge TV or playing board games on the sofas. It’s pretty dope, especially if SSA management orders everyone pizza to say sorry for constantly cutting the water off, as they did once this year!

Receptionists and Safety

For the most part, the receptionists are absolutely lovely and will help with pretty much everything you need and even if you just need to talk! You’ll inevitably meet them a lot to pick up packages or pick up a laundry card so it’s worth learning their names and smiling when you see them (which you probably will do anyway as they’re so nice). When we were concerned about our flatmates not picking up their phone on a night out they helped reassure us and talked us through the next steps, which was really helpful. It’s nice having someone always there.

I felt pretty safe once I was inside SSA because for anyone to even get to your flat they generally need to tap their lanyard twice: to enter the courtyard and then to enter each block of flats. The surrounding area is essentially central London (Waterloo) so it’s reasonably well lit, but the way to some other accommodations like GDS aren’t particularly nice at night.

There were a few receptionists that were not-so-nice (as you can probably expect with most student accommodations), especially at night. They would demand that you show your lanyard if you’re entering in a group, not-so-nicely ask whether everyone was signed in if they were a guest and sometimes not even help the paramedics in emergencies.

Location and Groceries

SSA is located in an amazing place. It’s a five minute walk from Waterloo station (a place where major tube lines and buses come if you’re a non-Londoner) and it’s just off the huge IMAX roundabout (where celebs like Angelina Jolie paid a visit!). You can walk to the London Eye and Southbank whenever you feel like it! The walk to Ministry isn’t so bad either. Waterloo bridge is pretty nice, but I will never understand why international students romanticise it so much when Golden Jubilee bridge is only a few meters away!

Most people who live at SSA are Strand campus students so just a quick 10 min walk over the bridge will land you there and you might sometimes have lessons in the SSA lecture hall opposite reception! I’m a Guy’s campus student but honestly the 25 minute walk or usually equally-as-long 381 bus ride wasn’t too bad as I didn’t have to go to campus much during first year and the location of SSA more than made up for it. I don’t think I would have traded it for the 5 minute walk from GDS because the London Bridge area just isn’t as nice in my opinion.

The nearest shops are the small Tesco Express or Sainsbury’s opposite the station or the pair 10 minutes away at Southwark which aren’t fantastic but will feed you well in a hurry. There’s also an Oseyo for dumplings and in-station stores like M and S if you want something a bit fancier. If you’re willing to travel to save some pennies, taking the bus to Lidl from Waterloo is a great option for a weekly or monthly grocery haul.

Maintenance and Repairs

On the most part SSA will help repair and maintain things. You can ask the receptionists to put in a work order or just email them, but it might take a few weeks for anyone to come and see the problem and a few more before they fix it. It took a few months to fix the extractor fan in our kitchen, for example, and a few days to fix the leaky outflow pipe in my bathroom. There are some things they will never really tend to, as we found out, like the bathroom fans. For the most part the maintenance staff are nice and helpful (like calling our flatmates to make sure it was ok to go into the room if we weren’t there and updating us on the situation), bar one freak incident which was dealt with appropriately by the reception staff [we never saw the rude worksman again].

The Four Horsemen of the SSA-pocalypse (Problems)

Although living here was pretty nice, there were quite a few problems. At one point it got so bad that many of us felt we should be reimbursed and formally complained to SSA staff. The four horsemen that plagued us seemingly constantly were: water shortages, noise, fire alarms and lack of electricity.

First, the basic utilities. Sometimes our water was cut off completely in our bathrooms and kitchens with no notice (usually reception would email us at least a day before, though). At one point there was no water overnight and the only solution was to use the facilities at the library across the road to shower. Although many of these incidents could be attributed to “essential” maintenance work many times it was the fault of a clumsy builder and the lack of notice from anyone that angered us all. On a separate occasion we had no electricity in half of the rooms in our flat for a day and the only explanation given to us was that we had blown a fuse, despite us not using any new appliances and not even being in the rooms.

Secondly, the construction works. These made living at SSA sometimes unbearable. Apart from them needing to cut off the water at least once a week in the early months, it also lead to loud drilling noises (especially where I lived, opposite a flat that was being refurbished) and unbearable amounts of wood dust in the flat and the lift. Drilling near exam season was frankly unacceptable. There were times when construction workers didn’t even respect the quiet hours in the early morning and we woke up to their harsh drill sounds. Hopefully this issue is quickly resolved as flats are finished being refurbished, but it took a whole year for them to refurbish the flat opposite us so I wouldn’t be hopeful for next year.

A problem that did improve over time was the frequency of fire alarms. There were weeks where a fire alarm literally happened every day and fire crews had to turn up every time to check but often just left disappointed because someone had smoked directly under a fire alarm during a flat party (which aren’t usually great due to the lack of space in the kitchens, anyway). In the last few months these have become much rarer so hopefully it’s not going to be a problem next year.

A funny one-off incident was when some workers opened up the sewer drains and took a selfie with poop. Gross. They never warned us about that either so all the rooms with the windows open smelled like doo-doo for a while…

Gym

It’s pretty awesome! You get free membership if you live at SSA and the gym has plenty of cardio equipment (think concept rowers and fancy treadmills) and resistance training machines. There are two squat racks, a hefty dumbbell rack and plenty of free weights in general. There are some times when it’s a lot less crowded and you basically get the gym to your own. Otherwise, it’s generally just other SSA peeps so it’s a nice training environment and I think they still do women-only training days. The changing rooms and showers were very nice, but pretty stinky!

Laundry

It might take a while to learn how to spam the machines so they start, but the laundry system is pretty simple. You get a laundry card from reception, top up money on it online (Washstation) and load up the machines. It’s a bit annoying that you have to walk out of SSA and walk for a minute to get there, though. It takes half an hour to wash clothes and an hour to dry them off. It is pretty expensive, but if you use the last drier to the right it should be significantly cheaper (all hail the 50p drier)!

Annoyingly, students be students and sometimes all the laundry machines are full because people just don’t bother getting their laundry on time. Don’t be one of these people as there are plenty of times I’ve seen people get fed up of waiting and throw someone else’s laundry on the floor!

Free Pets

They probably won’t enter your flat but there are some cute little mice and shy foxes that patter around the courtyard and bins, especially at night 🙂

Moving In and Out

The wellbeing officers, receptionists and trolley cages make moving in and out quite nice. For some reason neither my key nor lanyard actually worked the first time but the receptionists and students helped me sort it out quickly and I explained to my flatmates I wasn’t breaking in. There’s a service lift you can ask the receptionists to give you access to if you’re moving boxes of luggage from the reception to the courtyard and there’s a small parking area near the courtyard to load boxes if you need a storage unit over summer. A few forms and returning your keys means moving out only takes a few minutes.

Living with Flatmates and My Personal Experience

I do think your experience at SSA will largely be determined by how well you get on with your flatmates and how many of them you have. I was blessed with an absolutely lovely group of eight and nights going out with them were some of my favourite experiences of first year! I do know some people who ended up with only a few flatmates (like a flat of three), some of which were not-so-nice or just never there, making it difficult to socialise. It’s especially harder because SSA’s common room is a bit far from some rooms and probably not the first place you want to go as a socially shy fresher, but I will say that I met some absolutely lovely people in SSA and I think even if your flatmates aren’t the best you will get on fine as long as you put yourself out there and maybe assimilate yourself into another flat.

Overall, I loved living at SSA (despite some of its flaws). Would I have said the same thing if I ended up in a flat of people I hated? Maybe not. But having visited GDS and some other student accommodations, I think I ended up pretty well off and there were times during my search for next year’s accommodation when I thought to myself that I would be pretty happy living at SSA for another year if I could 🙂

Addendum: A Tour of A Refurbished Flat

Rooms: https://youtube.com/shorts/bO0PKFZnX1E?feature=share

Kitchen: https://youtube.com/shorts/XU95NTMDENg?feature=share