Leeds student moved into accommodation to find stains that ‘look like blood’ in the room

The first year student said it looked a ‘crime had been committed’ in her room


A Leeds student who is allegedly spending £182 a week on their accommodation has shared how they moved in to find their room dirty, with the mattress stained and paint peeling from the walls.

The first year student, Lucy*, had just started at the University of Leeds, and took to social media to post a video of her Classic En Suite room in Unite Students owned halls, The Plaza, after she arrived to discover it unclean and without all the advertised furnishings.

Lucy joked that her room appeared to look as though a crime has been committed in there, with a red stain marking both the mattress and the adjacent lampshade which “looked a lot like blood”.

Cerys' mattress, stained with a mystery substance.

via @ceryshawkes on TikTok

Speaking to The Tab, Lucy said: “When I came into the room I saw that there was a huge stain that looked a lot like blood on the mattress so I called my parents over and they thought the same, so we decided to flip the mattress and it was even worse on the other side.”

Looking around the room, Lucy noticed further stains of a similar nature: “I then looked to the lampshade that was adjacent to where the stain was and there was a splatter on there too.”

In addition to the stained mattress and dirty lampshade, she described how paint on the walls was peeling, the radiators and doors were still decorated with old stickers and how she couldn’t see out of the windows as they were so dirty.

“The room had paint peeling off the walls and old stickers on radiators and doors and the window was so dirty you couldn’t see outside,” Lucy said.

The lampshade was also marked.

via @ceryshawkes on TikTok

Communal areas were similarly not up to scratch, with the kitchen missing chairs and the hoover being dirty: “The kitchen didn’t have any chairs so we couldn’t sit down to eat and the hoover they gave us let’s off a horrible smell.”

The English literature and film studies student said she reported the seating problem to the accommodation’s front desk, which resulted in the kitchen chairs being replaced the next day.

Lucy further discovered she had actually been assigned the wrong room when moving into the accommodation. She explained that after coming back to her flat from the city centre, she found out they had given her the wrong room, and that her flatmate had instead been allocated the dirty room.

She said: “I came back to finding out that they had given me the wrong room and I had to move into a new one (which admittedly is much nicer). So now my flatmate is living in the dirty room.”

https://www.tiktok.com/@ceryshawkes/video/7279423768596892960?_r=1&_t=8fmmbawR5Qv

Though she admits her new room is much nicer, she emphasised how disappointing it was to have to complain in the first place. Lucy said: “I don’t think anything was reported about the state of the room in the end, but every issue that we found had been resolved. However, it would’ve been nice to arrive to a clean room and have everything that was listed on the website considering it’s £182 pw!”

A Unite Students spokesperson said: “We don’t have any records showing a complaint of this nature from a student living in The Plaza, Leeds. We would encourage this student to contact us directly.

“All our students have access to our app where they can log issues or they can speak to staff in the property. We always attempt to quickly resolve complaints raised during our check-in process.”

If you have a story about the standard of your student halls and want to let us know, you can get in touch via our Instagram, @thetab_leeds.

*Name has been changed to protect privacy 

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Featured image via @ceryshawkes on TikTok.