One weekly price
All bills included, and we mean all of them
From GBP 105 per person per week, covering rent, gas, electric, water and WiFi. One figure, one payment, nothing arriving later with a different company's name on it.
What is in it
Four things, and none of them asterisked
Plenty of student houses advertise bills included and mean a capped allowance that runs out in February. Here is ours, plainly.
- Gas and electric
- Heating, hot water and power. Not an allowance and not an estimate that gets reconciled later: it is in the weekly figure.
- Water
- Included, with no separate account in anyone's name and nothing to set up when you move in.
- WiFi
- Connected and working on the day you arrive. Nobody has to sign an 18-month broadband contract in their own name and chase five housemates for a share of it.
- Council tax
- Not something we pay, because a house where everyone is a full-time student is exempt from it entirely. See below, it is the part people get wrong.
The bit people get wrong
Students do not pay council tax
This costs Stoke students money every year, because nobody tells them.
A property where every occupant is a full-time student is exempt from council tax. Not discounted, exempt. You do not pay it, and neither does your landlord on your behalf, because there is nothing to pay.
The exemption is not automatic. The council has to be told, and they want proof: your university issues a council tax certificate confirming you are enrolled full-time. Staffordshire University and Keele both produce these, usually through the student portal. Get yours, send it to Stoke-on-Trent City Council or Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council depending on which side of the boundary your house sits, and keep a copy.
Two things to watch. If one person in the house is not a full-time student the exemption is lost and the house becomes liable, usually with a 25 percent single-occupant style discount rather than nothing. And if you stay on over the summer after your course formally ends, you stop counting as a student from that end date, not from when you move out.
If a bill turns up anyway, it is nearly always because the certificate never got sent. Tell us and we will help you sort it.
Why it matters
What one price actually changes
The money is part of it. The bigger part is what you are not doing all year.
In a house paying bills separately, somebody has to put each account in their name. That person carries the credit risk, does the chasing, and is the one the supplier calls. It is the single most common cause of falling out with housemates, and it lands on whoever is least able to say no.
There is also no winter. A house on separate bills budgets on autumn usage and gets a January bill two or three times the size, at the point in the year when money is tightest and nobody wants to turn the heating on. With one weekly figure the cost in February is the cost in October, so the heating question never becomes an argument.
For a parent or guarantor it means the number on the tenancy agreement is the number. There is no variable second cost to underwrite. The page we wrote for parents covers what else the agreement commits to.
If you want the longer breakdown of how bills-included pricing is put together and what to ask any landlord who offers it, that is in our guide to student bills in Stoke.
Houses
Every one of these is all bills included
Prices shown are per person per week with gas, electric, water and WiFi in them.
Top homes
Browse all our houses or read about renting direct from a private landlord.
One price. Ask us what is in it.
Arrange a viewing and we will go through the figure line by line before you commit to anything.