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Money & Housing Advice

Who are we and what do we do?

The Money & Housing Advice Service offers advice, guidance, and advocacy to all King’s College London students, through all stages of the student journey. Whether you are thinking of coming to King’s or already have an offer to study with us, we provide advice, information, and outreach sessions to help you prepare your finances before you embark on the course. 

Throughout your studies, we can help you to navigate any changes to your personal circumstances, especially if they impact your living arrangements, housing options or financial security.   

We also work closely with our student staff, the KCL Student Money Mentors and external partners Blackbullion and NASMA to develop proactive resources, tools and campaigns to keep you informed of current student issues and how to make the most of your experience at university right up to graduation.

Our aim is to inform and empower the student body to take agency of their own financial situation and housing options, but we are also here to support and advocate on a student client’s behalf when required, and if we are the most appropriate team to do so.  If the expertise sits with another team or agency, we will work with you to refer or signpost you to appropriate support. 

Money Advice Service

We advise King’s students on all aspects of UK statutory funding, fee status, hardship funds, budgeting, money management, welfare benefits, council tax liability and debt. We work with individual student clients to capture their full history and the background to the issue that they hope to resolve.

We will take into consideration your personal obstacles and preferred solutions and will advise you impartially and pragmatically on the options available and explain why some outcomes cannot be achieved. Where possible we will set out a plan for resolving the case and support you to take the next steps you choose unless we have identified a conflict of interests, or another team are best placed to support your case. 

In order to provide robust and extensive money advice services, we have partnered with Westminster Citizen’s Advice Bureau to provide independent consumer debt advice alongside our caseworkers.

Whilst we work closely with our colleagues in the Student Funding Office and Credit Control, in order to resolve student issues, we are not decision makers with respect to hardship fund applications, or payment plan requests.  We can advise you on university policy and how to prepare an application for financial support, but we are not empowered to overturn a decision by a university committee or internal department.  Where appropriate we will assist you to follow the relevant processes in order to consider your request.  You can also speak to KCLSU Advice if you require independent advice on university processes.

Housing Advice Service

We can advise you on your housing options and guide you on where to look for appropriate accommodation, as well as what to look out for so that you do not fall foul of scams or fraud. We can check your contract and advise on its content, helping you to understand your obligations and when to challenge clauses. We can also advise you if things go wrong, including disputes, complaints, and homelessness.

We provide our housing advice services in conjunction with the University of London Housing Service and Westminster Citizen’s Advice Bureau.  Depending on the nature of your enquiry we will determine which team is best placed to support you with your housing case.

Please note that we are not part of King’s Residences but can work collaboratively with them should you experience homelessness or problems paying your fees.

King's Student Money Mentors

Student Money Mentors are recruited, trained, and supervised by the Money & Housing Advisors.

We are current students at King’s College London who value the importance of financial education and are passionate about King’s students being as money savvy as possible.

We aim to help our fellow peers make the most of their money, whatever the budget! We offer guidance on how to evaluate your spending, save money and plan for the future. We pride ourselves on knowing where to get the best discounts and deals in London, if there is a bargain to be had we will track it down and share it far and wide.

We also wish to protect our fellow students from potential scams and financial problems and work closely with advisers to feedback on the student experience and help shape the policies that provide financial assistance at King’s.

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Who do we work with?

We work with all teams across Students & Education to resolve student issues and identify trends and issues for students, with the goal of putting support in place to help limit the impact on students.

We work with KCLSU Officers and Advice Service to refer and signpost cases where we would have a conflict of interest as a university service so that students can be assured of impartial and independent advice. We also work closely with our colleagues in Chaplaincy to provide additional pastoral support.

In addition to the other teams we have already mentioned, we also work closely with Widening Participation to support students before they arrive and with our colleagues in faculty, estates and central administrative services to help inform staff and students of the opportunities that are available to them.

 

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