By Lenny Osler, News Reporter
Residents pay £218.89 per week for ensuite rooms in Metal Works, which only opened last year, September 2024.
By the morning of March 3, all 11 bedrooms in flat B105 had been flooded due to water coming up from shower drains beginning March 2 early afternoon.
Maddie and Ayden, B105 residents, told Epigram that overnight, what appeared to be originally clean water was now contained sewage.
@b105rules ♬ original sound - Mememaker_joshua
The flat’s post to TikTok about the flooding has amassed 35k views
Maddie lost scarfs, jackets, backpacks, climbing harnesses, climbing bags and four pairs of shoes due to sewage water seeping into her under-bed storage.
‘It’s a biohazard’, she said.
Alice, another B105 resident, told Epigram her iPad keyboard was ‘sopping wet’ and completely broken.
Alice claimed that despite reception being made aware of the situation by 2:00 pm, the mains electricity was not switched off until 7:00 pm, around six hours after the leak began.
The University of Bristol does not own Metal Works, instead having a lease on rooms. Fresh, a rental management company, is responsible for day-to-day management of the accommodation, including on-site operations and maintenance coordination.
Fresh told Epigram that:
‘Following reports of blocked shower drains at the Metal Works site on Monday 2nd March, a contractor was called to site to investigate the issue. The issue was resolved the following day and water removed from impacted flats. Residents were provided with alternative accommodation.’
An email of complaint, seen by Epigram, was sent March 4 by Ayden to the University of Bristol's Student Accommodation mailbox regarding the ‘utter mismanagement of the flooding situation.’
Sofia Lambis
In the email, Ayden alleged staff gave ‘conflicting messages’ about where he should stay on Monday night.
He said to Epigram that residents were verbally informed by Metal Works staff on March 3 that they had until March 9 to move their belongings. However, he claims that on 4 March, residents were told verbally to move everything out by the next day.
The email complains that despite the provision of trolleys, ‘making residents clean up their wet rooms is firstly unsafe and is a physical toll.’
Ayden also told Epigram he was frustrated at having to get used to new flatmates due to B105 residents being split up.
At time of print there has been no direct response to the email of complaint.
An email sent March 10 to B105 residents from Abi Hilier, Metal Works General Manager, originally offered a £25 Asda voucher ‘to apologise for any inconvenience caused.’ It outlined an additional clean of new rooms and said insurance for damaged items were covered in residents’ tenancy contracts.
A later email sent March 13 from Hilier offered a further £100 in acknowledgement of ‘inconvenience and disruption’, two complimentary wash and cry credits, and to cover excess fees of insurance claims.
Hilier said in this email that:
‘We are truly sorry for how the situation was handled and communicated initially. We know things could have been managed more proactively, and we appreciate that unclear and delayed communication will have added to the stress of an already difficult situation. We really regret the impact this has had on you.
‘Whilst relocating residents was the safest and necessary action given the severity of the leak, we completely understand that having to move rooms on short notice was disruptive, stressful, and challenging.’
Beatrice Learmouth
James Lewis
A University of Bristol spokesperson said to Epigram:
‘A flood at Metal Works earlier this month caused significant damage to one of the flats and meant that water was unavailable for a number of residents in the same block for several hours.
We worked with the building managers, Fresh, to get this resolved and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this caused. The students in the affected flat have been relocated to other rooms within Metal Works.’
Featured image: Epigram / Ellen Reynolds
