Accommodation frequently asked questions

LJMU guarantees a bedroom in high quality accommodation to all new students, regardless of what course they are doing or when they apply. We refer to the accommodation we offer as “halls” but they are not the old-fashioned halls of residence with long corridors and communal showers. Instead, they are blocks of modern flats, where you will only share a flat with other new LJMU students.

The flats typically have five or six bedrooms each but we have flats with as few as four bedrooms and as many as ten bedrooms. All flats feature a kitchen/lounge area with plenty of space to cook for yourself and socialise with your flatmates. Most bedrooms feature private en-suite bathrooms, although flats with shared bathrooms can be a cheaper option.

We obviously cannot guarantee a room in a specific hall to every applicant as some halls will be full before the start of the academic year. Therefore, if you have a preference for a particular hall, it is important to submit your accommodation request as soon as possible.

There is no catered accommodation at LJMU but all flats, including studios, have full kitchen facilities, meaning you can be self-sufficient. There are also plenty of food outlets, supermarkets and cafés/restaurants throughout the city centre, suiting every budget.

Where you live is totally your decision and will obviously depend on what you can afford and what facilities you want. Most students tend to choose a hall that is located quite close to where their course is taught. If you know the campus in which your course is taught, you can look at pages 7 and 8 of the latest Accommodation Guide (PDF, 1.56MB) to see a list of halls recommended for that campus and also view their locations in the map on page 12. We also offer an accessible version of the Accommodation Guide (Word, 29.7KB).

As a general guide, business, law, arts and social science courses are taught in the Mount Pleasant Campus and science, engineering and healthcare courses are taught in the City Campus.

There are individual webpages about each hall, which include detailed descriptions of the location, facilities, flat sizes and so on. Each page also includes images of the hall and in most cases, there are 360-degree views of typical bedrooms, bathrooms and the kitchen/lounge area.

Postgraduate and mature students should consult the information on this page and contact the Accommodation Office for further advice if necessary.

Nursing and healthcare students should consult the information on this page and contact the Accommodation Office for further advice if necessary.

If you request a bedroom via the Accommodation Office, you will only share your flat with other new LJMU students. If you choose accommodation close to the building in which your course is taught then it is likely that you will be sharing with other students on similar courses. If you know you definitely want to live in a certain type of flat, please indicate this when you submit your accommodation request and the Accommodation Office will do its best to meet your needs.

Shared bathroom

Here you will share a bathroom, kitchen facilities and living area. Your room will be completely your own. This is our best value room type and is always in high demand. You might like to think of this room type as being most similar to your accommodation at home.

En-suite room

In an en-suite room you have your own bedroom and a small private bathroom. You would share a living area and kitchen. Flat sizes can range from four to ten bedrooms. We have more en-suite rooms than any other type. Normally, we find that most students will choose this type.

Studio

Please email the Accommodation Office for advice if you are thinking about requesting a studio.

Yes you can share your flat with a friend or friends if you wish. There is a box on the request form where you can write in the names of anyone with whom you wish to share. You all need to have selected LJMU as your Firm choice university and you should submit your requests at the same time to avoid any delays. Obviously you all need to choose the same hall too!

Please email the Accommodation Office for advice if you are thinking about requesting a studio.

Sorry, no animals are permitted in any accommodation. This includes goldfish!

Sorry, smoking is not permitted in any accommodation and this also includes “vaping” – the use of electronic cigarettes.

You certainly can – LJMU Open Days are a great way of viewing student accommodation, as well as finding out about all the other great things LJMU has to offer. If you visit us during an Open Day you will be able to visit a typical flat and study bedroom in as many of the accommodation sites as you wish.

Once you are offered a place at the University, you will be invited to an Applicant Day which offers a further opportunity to visit student accommodation (please note that a few courses do not hold Applicant Days).

We strongly recommend that you book accommodation for your first year at university via this website. The only way to guarantee that you will share with other new LJMU students like yourself is to book it this way. LJMU and John Moores Student Union invest considerable resources in the support of new students in the Halls listed here and this will not be available if you choose to live elsewhere.

Requesting student accommodation at LJMU is easy and is done via Applicant hub and cannot be done in any other way. You will need your UCAS or University ID and also the email address that you used to apply to LJMU in order to access the applicant hub and to submit your accommodation request.

Please note that you cannot submit a request for accommodation unless you have received and have Firmly accepted an offer from LJMU. If you have applied to university via UCAS, you must have accepted an offer from LJMU as your firm (first) choice. You can Firmly accept an offer in UCAS Track once you have received offers from all the universities to which you have applied.

When completing the accommodation request within the applicant hub, you have the option of adding an additional email address if you wish. If you do that, this will be the email address that your selected hall will use to contact you. If the email address that you used to apply to LJMU is from a school or college account, you must enter a personal email address here, such as Gmail or Hotmail. We cannot process your request for accommodation without a personal email address. You may also wish to go into your UCAS Track account and update your contact details to this personal email address, as this will ensure that you receive all relevant communications from LJMU.

All new LJMU students are guaranteed accommodation and we allocate rooms to students who have submitted a request and who have (by definition) already Firmly accepted an offer. Therefore, some halls and room types will inevitably sell out before the start of the academic year. Because of this we recommend that you submit a request as soon as you have firmly accepted an offer and made your choice of where to live.

Please contact the Accommodation Office if you have any concerns about how and when to request your accommodation.

The usual reason for this is because you have not made LJMU your firm choice on UCAS.

Please log into UCAS Track to ensure that you have done this. If you cannot log into UCAS Track, you must contact UCAS.

Please note:
You cannot book accommodation without making LJMU your firm choice.

UCAS takes a few hours to update when a student has made their firm choice. If you have made LJMU your firm choice within the last 24 hours, you should be able to book later today.

The only way to book accommodation is via the LJMU Applicant Hub, we do not take bookings via any other means.

Please contact the Accommodation Office if you have any concerns about how and when to request your accommodation.

All requests are checked to ensure they are complete and to confirm that you have made LJMU your Firm choice university. If your request is valid, we will transfer your details to the owner of your chosen accommodation and they will allocate you a room according to your preferences. We transfer student details every Wednesday morning and this includes requests received until 5pm on the preceding Tuesday.

The accommodation owner will contact you by email using the address entered on your request. In some cases you will be sent a tenancy agreement and related forms and in other cases you will be asked to log on to a booking system. It is important to note that this email will come from the accommodation owner and not from LJMU. You should follow the instructions and complete the booking within seven days, otherwise the room may be re-allocated to another student.

Please feel free to email the LJMU Accommodation Office at any time with any queries about the accommodation request process.

Once you have submitted an accommodation request via Applicant hub, you cannot submit another request until you have cancelled the first one. In addition, you cannot change the Hall that you have requested until you have cancelled the first request. It’s easy to cancel your request by selecting the ‘cancel accommodation request’ option and selecting one of the reasons for cancelling – and you can then submit a new request . The LJMU Accommodation Office will inform the owner of your original accommodation that you wish to cancel and in due course you will be contacted by the owner of the new accommodation. Please contact the Accommodation Office before you cancel a request if you have any queries or concerns about your accommodation choices.

No, as long as you make LJMU your first choice university, the Accommodation Office will process your request for accommodation, regardless of whether you have a conditional or unconditional offer.

If you are unsuccessful in meeting the terms of your offer and are rejected by LJMU, your booking will be cancelled and any payment you have made will be refunded in full.

For academic year 2024/25, the cancellation deadline for students who have met the terms of their offer is 5pm on Friday 30 August 2024.

No, LJMU disregards this piece of information on your UCAS application and accepts accommodation requests from all students who have made LJMU their first choice university.

No, the Accommodation Office is not informed of the details of your application for student funding so you can complete our online request form even if you have said you will be living at home.

However students who live at home are entitled to a smaller maintenance loan and if you wish to take advantage of the larger loan, you need to inform the Student Loans Company (SLC) of your change of circumstances as soon as possible. It is important to note that when you apply for funding, you declare that you will inform the SLC of any change of circumstances. If you indicate to the SLC that you are going to live in accommodation but then decide to live at home instead, you must inform them immediately.

More information about student funding can be found on the GOV.UK website.

In order to be eligible to pay rent in three equal instalments, UK students need to provide the details of someone who will act as their guarantor. The guarantor is usually a parent or guardian, but can be a sibling or a family friend, as long as the person named is also resident in the UK and is prepared to accept the obligations of being a guarantor. This means accepting that they are legally bound to pay any outstanding rent if you (the student) fail to do so for any reason.

The accommodation owner may need to verify the identity of the proposed guarantor and can refuse to accept any guarantor who cannot be located on the electoral roll. However they will not verify their residence status or income and so any adult UK resident is acceptable as a guarantor in most circumstances.

If you are a UK student but you don’t have someone who will act as your guarantor, please email the Accommodation Office for advice. It is sometimes possible to instruct the accommodation owner to waive the guarantor requirement but each case is considered on its own merits and requires further investigation by the University. If it is decided to waive the guarantor, the accommodation owner will not be told the reason they are being asked to do so.

Students from outside the UK do not need to provide the details of a guarantor because they are usually required to pay the full year's rent in advance of arrival. This includes students living in the Republic of Ireland, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. If you are resident outside the UK but have someone in the UK who is prepared to act as your guarantor, it may be possible for you to pay in instalments: please contact the Accommodation Office for advice in this instance.

In order to secure your room, you should comply in full with the instructions sent by your accommodation provider. This will include signing and returning a tenancy agreement and additional documentation such as the guarantor form, although this may take place online. You will also be asked to make an initial payment of no more than £150 and to provide details of a bank account to be used to make the rent payments after you arrive at university.

It is important to note that if you have a conditional offer from LJMU but do not subsequently achieve the required examination results to study here, this initial payment will be refunded in full by your accommodation provider and the tenancy agreement will be cancelled by your accommodation provider.

No, we only process accommodation requests from students who have Firmly accepted their offer from LJMU and made us their first choice university. If you are holding an offer from us as your Insurance choice, you will not be able to submit a request via the applicant hub.

If you accept an offer from LJMU as your Firm choice and make a payment to secure a room, but subsequently decide to make us your Insurance choice, you may not be entitled to a refund of the deposit. If you initially take LJMU as your Insurance university but we subsequently become your Firm choice, you should submit a request via Applicant hub as soon as possible.

If LJMU is your Insurance choice university and your place here is confirmed when the exam results are released in August, you can request accommodation at that stage. Further details will be released when information about the Clearing period is published in the summer. In previous years, nearly all new students who took up a place at LJMU during the Clearing period were offered rooms in one of the Halls listed on our website.

To secure your accommodation, you or someone you trust can send in your accommodation request using Applicant hub as normal. Your chosen accommodation provider will contact you by email to either send a tenancy agreement to print, sign and return, or to ask you to log onto their booking system.

If you will not be able to follow these instructions at that stage, it is important that someone explains this and asks them to reserve a room for you. They may require that someone pays the initial payment on your behalf or they may wait until you return home, depending on their policies and the likely time that you will be away. Either way, you will need to sign the tenancy agreement as soon as possible when you return and make the payment if this has not been done.

Auditions and interviews are held at LJMU for a limited number of courses and most of these take place in January, February and early March. We allocate rooms on a “first come, first served” basis but students can only send an accommodation request once they have received - and have Firmly accepted - an offer from LJMU. Therefore, it is possible that some students who are invited to interview or audition could miss out on their preferred hall if their offer arrives after we start to accept requests on Monday 8 April 2024.

To stop this happening, the last few rooms in each Hall will be reserved for these students and will only be allocated once the majority of interviews and auditions have been completed. Please note that this does not apply to the interviews for Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedic courses because these students are advised to stay in particular halls and enough rooms are set aside there to house all potential students.

Yes, all Foundation students can request a room in a LJMU-affiliated Hall (those listed on this website) for their first year living in Liverpool. However, if you live close to the city, you may wish to commute during the first year and request accommodation for your second year of study instead. If so, you are likely to be sharing a flat with other students who have just arrived in the city and who will be at the same stage of their course as you. You can also request accommodation from LJMU for both of the first two years, but this is subject to some conditions. Please read the FAQ immediately below this one for further details on these conditions.

If you are studying on a Foundation course and you have not lived in a LJMU-affiliated hall in your first year in Liverpool, then you can request accommodation in a LJMU flat sharing with new students like any other new student. If you are studying on a Foundation course and you have already lived in a LJMU-affiliated hall, you can still request accommodation in a LJMU flat sharing with new students but in a limited selection of halls. In addition, the Accommodation Office reserves the right to contact your current hall owner for information about your behaviour and your payment record over the past year. For academic year 2024/25, we will not offer rooms in the following halls to Foundation students who have already lived in our accommodation: Copperas House, Grand Central, Hardman House, St Luke’s View and Horizon Heights. This list may be amended in response to changes in the availability of halls – please email the LJMU Accommodation Office for further information.

Unfortunately we cannot provide accommodation for Degree Apprenticeship (DA) students in our partner halls. The halls can only accept full-time students due to Council Tax rules and DA students are not classed as full-time. In addition, you will be working for an employer for most of the week and hence living in student accommodation is not a suitable environment.

If you require accommodation while undertaking a DA course at LJMU, you might find a suitable a room on the SpareRoom website, which is also a useful resource for staff and part-time students seeking accommodation.

If you are able to pay your rent in full, in advance of arriving in Liverpool, some accommodation providers will offer you a discount on the annual cost. All the accommodation offered to new LJMU students will allow home (UK-based) students to pay their rent in three equal instalments if they can provide the details of a UK-based guarantor. These instalments are timed to coincide with receipt of funding from the Student Loans Company – the first instalment is usually due in late September, with further instalments due in early January and late March or early April.

Students from outside the UK are required to pay the rent in full and in advance of arriving at LJMU unless they can provide details of a UK-based guarantor.

Yes, all the accommodation offered by LJMU to new students feature all-inclusive rents, so there will be no additional charges for heating or lighting. WiFi internet access is also included within the rents, as is basic contents insurance.

All the accommodation providers require an initial payment when the tenancy agreement is signed to confirm the booking. In some cases this becomes a damage deposit and will be returned at the end of the tenancy, minus any charges for damage. In other cases this is a pre-payment and the amount you will pay after you arrive is reduced, either split across the three instalments or deducted from the last instalment. Details of how much this initial payment will be and whether it is a deposit or pre-payment can be found on the pages for the individual accommodation sites.

If a television is provided in the communal area of your flat, then a TV Licence will have been purchased for you and your flatmates by the accommodation provider (Please note this does not apply to students living in studios, who will need to buy their own Licence). 

But any student who watches or records live television on anything other than the communal television will require their own TV Licence. It doesn’t matter what channel you watch and it doesn’t matter what equipment you use – traditional TV, games console, laptop or mobile phone. You still need to be covered by a Licence if you watch or record live television programmes or if you download and watch BBC programmes on iPlayer. You are not covered by any Licence which has been purchased for your family home. 

If you’re found to be using TV without a Licence, you may be prosecuted and fined up to £1,000 plus court costs, and you will still need to buy a TV Licence. To find out more about whether you require a Licence, visit the TV Licensing website.

No – full-time students living in private accommodation with other students are fully exempt from Council Tax.

All of the accommodation offered to new students has basic insurance cover included within the rent. As a general rule, this cover does not include loss or damage to laptop computers and students are usually offered the chance to purchase additional cover on arrival in Liverpool.

It is advisable to check carefully to ensure that your belongings are covered, especially if you have any unusual or valuable items. However it is also a good idea to check whether your belongings would be covered by an insurance policy at your permanent home address, even if this is in the name of a parent or guardian.

The majority of accommodation will allow a friend to stay with you in your room for one or two nights. You should check your tenancy agreement as this will outline the rules for your specific accommodation. Please remember that if your friend causes any damage or disruption while staying with you then you may be held liable for it. It is also important to take account of the views of your flatmates when inviting friends to stay.

You should always contact the on-site accommodation staff in the first instance as they are best placed to rectify any problems. If they are unable to assist or you don't feel that they are taking the issue seriously then the next step is to email the LJMU Accommodation Office.

Student Living Assistants are available to new students for help and advice with many of the problems that you may encounter. In addition we offer a number of support services, who provide a confidential service if you need to talk to someone about any problems you have. JMSU also provides a number of clubs and societies, which you can join to meet people with similar interests.

No – your room is yours from the first day of the tenancy until the last, and you do not have to move anything out of your room or your flat during that period.

Yes – all of the halls offered to new LJMU students have rooms available for second and third year students and hence you can stay longer than one year if you wish. Most LJMU students now stay in hall style accommodation for the duration of their course – although often this means living in more than one hall over this period.

In Liverpool, living in a hall can be just as economical as moving into a private house, when all the extra costs are included. Additional costs associated with houses include paying for extra weeks that you may not need (tenancies are typically 52 weeks) and possibly the cost of travel to and from the city-centre. In addition, students living in halls generally benefit from a more convenient location, better security, stronger WiFi and better response times to any maintenance issues.

Tenancy agreements for new students moving into the halls listed on this website commence on Saturday, 14 September 2024. The only exceptions are for Nursing and Midwifery students and a small number of postgraduates.

Induction week for the vast majority of courses will commence on Monday 16 September 2024 and teaching will commence later that week, and no later than Monday 23 September.

Detailed information about the start of the academic year will be sent to all new students in summer 2024. Students will be allocated a move-in slot by the owner of their hall in the period between Thursday 12 and Saturday 14 September inclusive.

Please do not make detailed travel arrangements such as booking flights, ferries or trains until your slot has been confirmed.

If you have any queries about moving into your accommodation, please contact your hall owner in the first instance.

You will need to bring your personal bedding (sheets, pillows and pillow cases, blankets or duvet). Most shared kitchens do not contain crockery or cutlery, but it is advisable to bring the bare minimum with you at first (e.g. plate, mug, bowl, knife, fork and spoon). On arrival you will be able to decide with your new flatmates what items are required and then purchase them communally.