Your room at Newnham

There are communal bathrooms, shower rooms and toilets on each floor, except for in DGB where the rooms are all en-suite.

Each student bedroom in College is placed into a ‘household’ group to which specific bathrooms and kitchens are allocated.

There are local notices posted on all student kitchen doors to show you which student rooms are allocated to which kitchen. The kitchen doors are all on card access.

Personal guests to your household are allowed to use your kitchen and bathroom facilities, but they should be accompanied when using the kitchen facilities (as the doors are card access). 

Please bring a bathrobe and some slippers as the corridors can be a little chilly in the winter.

When you arrive, you will find on your bed:

• 1 x mattress protector
• 1 x duvet
• 2 x pillows
• 2 x pillow protectors

Newnham students need to bring their own bedlinen and towels, i.e. bottom sheet, duvet cover, pillowcases and bath / hand towels.

The beds are all single beds, except those in the Dorothy Garrod Building and 4 accessible rooms on the ground floor of Sidgwick Hall, and the Band A and B Postgraduate bedrooms, which have double size bedlinen. If you have any doubt which size bed your room has before you arrive, please contact the Housekeeping.Manager@newn.cam.ac.uk .

If you arrive at College and were either unable to, or have forgotten to, bring bedlinen and towels with you, you may borrow a set from the Housekeeping Department (available at the Porters’ Lodge out of office hours).  The College washing machines and driers are free to use for students (see Laundry and drying facilities) so you will be able to easily launder your own items.

At Newnham the students clean their own rooms and so you should bring your own cleaning products and cloths and a tea towel to do your drying up in the communal kitchens.

If you need any advice or information, please ask in the Housekeeping Office.

The kitchens, bathrooms, toilets, corridors and stairs are cleaned by the Housekeeping Staff .

There is a list in the kitchen explaining the responsibilities of students and of the housekeeping staff in keeping the kitchens clean. There is a cleaning cupboard with equipment for student use on each floor of each Hall.

Please don’t leave vacuum cleaners lying around but return them to their cupboard after use. “Homeless Hoovers are a Health Hazard” and then get stolen or damaged.

If you have any concerns about the cleaning in your area, please contact the Housekeeping Manager.

Newnham College is registered under ANUK/Unipol [The Accreditation Network UK] and has adopted their code of practice for the management of student housing.

This code of practice for the Higher Education sector may be found at https://www.nationalcode.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=8ecc93e6-3779-4490-bdc0-c21fc704f9f1

Any student having concerns about the standards laid out therein should feel able to approach the relevant Head of Department or the Domestic Bursar.

Each undergraduate student receives a College Bill at the start of each term.

Postgraduate students will receive their first College Bill before matriculation.

This College Bill will contain the following: academic fees and – if living in College accommodation – a charge in advance for that term’s rent and CPP (Catering Pre-Payment). It will also include any charges from the previous term for Formal Hall bookings, printing, and other miscellaneous items.

The College Bill will be due for payment within two weeks of issue, although of course we are sympathetic to individual circumstances in the event of late payment (in such cases please contact your tutor).

Bills should be paid by bank transfer – we cannot accept payments by cash or credit/debit cards.

The College is normally closed for about a week over Christmas with the Catering Department being closed for a two week period.

The Library will normally be closed but the Sidgwick Study Room will remain open (via card access).

Depending on how Easter falls in relation to the start of the Easter Term, the College is normally closed from Good Friday to Easter Monday inclusive. During this time there is normally no Catering nor Housekeeping and access is via the Porters’ Lodge.

The normal time of summer closure is the week starting or ending with the August Bank Holiday.

The Porters’ Lodge will remain in operation 24/7 during the closure periods but will at times be single staffed.

• There are student communal kitchens on each floor in each hall (and one or more kitchens in each graduate house) equipped with a cooker and or a microwave, hob, fridge and sink. All the kitchens have a communal fridge(s) available.
• The postgraduate houses are provided with both fridges and freezers.
• Each student bedroom in College is placed into a ‘household’ group to which specific kitchens are allocated. There are local notices posted on all kitchens to inform you which kitchen facilities you should use.
• If you wish to have your own fridge in your room, you can bring one with you, but it must be AA rated and conform to the British Standard and it will be electrically tested.
• We recommend that first-year students do not bring fridges until they see that their room is big enough to accommodate one. All rooms in the Dorothy Garrod Building and Sidgwick have mini fridges.
• The Housekeeping Department will ensure the fridges/freezers in the communal areas are clean at the start of each term and then during term it is up to the students who share the fridges/freezers to keep them clean.
• Please bring your own crockery, cutlery, pots and pans and tea-towels.
• No cooking is allowed in the student rooms, this includes the use of a toaster (which is likely to set the smoke alarm off), portable hobs / burners, rice cookers, sandwich toasters, portable electric grill unit and deep fat fryers (this is not an exhaustive list).

Do not use blutac, whitetac, plastitac, sellotape, masking tape or anything else to fix items directly to walls. Sorry – you’ll be charged at the end of each term for the damage if you do this.

Most of our rooms have picture rails and each room is supplied with some picture hooks to start you off.

Every room has a pin-board, so you’ll need drawing pins for that.

You don’t need to bring your own curtains, lampshades or blinds – the College supplies these items which comply with fire regulations.

Please do not bring any furniture or remove any items from your room when you arrive, unless you have the written permission of the Housekeeping Manager or Deputy. Only furniture that has the correct flame retardancy labels will be allowed in College rooms.

If you have been given permission to bring some items of furniture with you, you will have to remove the furniture at the end of each term unless you are on a Continual Licence (see Room Licences below) so that the room can be used for other guests.

An inventory of all items provided in your room is provided for every room – please check this when you arrive and return a signed copy to the Housekeeping Office Ground Floor Fawcett – G21. (See Inventory below).

You can have an overnight guest (defined as from 12 midnight to 6am) in your room for not more than three nights in a “rolling seven-night period”. You must not accommodate a guest in your room if you are absent. All overnight guests must be signed in with the Porters’ Lodge whether the student lives on the main site or in a College house, in order to comply with the fire and safety regulations. This “signing-in” can be done in person at the Porters’ Lodge, by sending an email to porters@newn.cam.ac.uk or telephoning the Lodge 01223 335700.

From midnight until 7.00 am the Porters’ Lodge front door is card access only (although a Porter will be on duty to assist with any visitors). Only College members will be allowed to enter.

Members of the College are free to leave or return to College at any time.

The Porter or other staff members of the College may require a guest or a visitor causing disturbance or nuisance to leave the premises.

The heating in the main College undergraduate buildings (Old Hall, Fawcett, Sidgwick, Clough, Kennedy and Peile), the Dorothy Garrod Building (DGB) and also the Rosalind Franklin Building (RFB) are controlled by a Building Management System (which is computerised) and is set to come on between 6.00 am – 11.00 am and then 3.30 pm – 11:15 pm.

The heating in the graduate houses and flats in Grange Gardens are controlled by local time clocks which are set from 6.00 am –12 midnight with temperature sensor control interruptions during the day if the house maintains a temperature 21 degrees C.

The heating in all the buildings will only come on if the outside temperature is below the set point; it will go off again if the general building temperature rises to 21 degrees C.

The heating water temperature in the radiators is controlled by outside air temperature i.e. colder days have the warmer radiator temperatures.

Please note that in the Dorothy Garrod Building most of the student rooms have a heating system called a thermoskirt (so there is no radiator). If you open the window the heating will switch off.

When to report a problem to maintenance: 

If you find your radiator has two different temperatures, for example, it is hot at the bottom and cold at the top, then it probably needs bleeding.

If you find your radiator is cold to touch when the people in surrounding rooms have hot radiators.

If you have more than one radiator and one is hot and the other is cold.

Please email all maintenance issues to maintenance using the online maintenance tracking system: https://app.casc.cam.ac.uk/rms_live/

When NOT to report a problem to maintenance: 

If your radiators are HOT to touch but the room still feels cold – sorry but the room is probably colder due to the size of the room, height of the ceiling, the number of windows and its orientation, for example, north facing rooms are colder than south facing. In these circumstances there is nothing that maintenance can do to improve the heat level in the radiators, and you will just need to boost the temperature with the portable electric heater.

The College provides you with basic cover for the items in your rooms during your individual Licence Period only (see Licence Period below).

To check your cover click on the following link: https://www.endsleigh.co.uk/student/your-student-cover/?HHRef=HH1696

If you decide to take out your own insurance, you should satisfy yourself that it is offering the appropriate form of cover, for example, some companies will not pay compensation for items stolen from your room unless there is physical evidence that your room has been broken into.

The College is not responsible for the loss of or damage to your personal possessions not caused by a defect in the property.

Food, and all other goods and equipment kept in the kitchens and bathrooms are there at the tenant’s own risk.

Newnham College Certificate of Insurance 2023-24

When you arrive, you will find your bedroom clean and the bed made. On the bed will be a copy of your Room Inventory. This inventory covers all the items in your room and describes the state of the room, for example, any pre-existing marks on the carpet or walls. You need to check the inventory and then sign and return it to the Housekeeping Office.

Please keep your bank cards in a safe place. If you leave them in an unlocked room and they are stolen from it, the Bank may regard this as invalidating (to a greater or lesser extent) the arrangement under which you hold the cards. This could mean the loss of a substantial sum of money.

We therefore advise you to keep your room locked when you are not in it, even if you have just gone down the corridor to put the kettle on!

Opportunist thieves are a problem in all colleges and the only way to protect your property is to keep it locked up.

When going into the town centre, do not leave your purse or handbag unattended.

The Licence Period is the period of time for which you have been allocated a bedroom at Newnham. For undergraduates there are two licence periods available: the termly licence, or the continuous licence which includes the Christmas and Easter Vacation; more information is available from the Student Accommodation Officer (see Room Licence below).

The undergraduate termly licence dates for 2024-2025:

UNDERGRADUATE TERMLY LICENCE: 3 x 10 weeks

· Freshers arrive on Thursday 3 Oct 2024

· Sat 05 Oct 2024 – Sat 14 Dec 2024

· Sat 18 Jan 2025 – Sat 29 Mar 2025

· Sat 19 Apr 2025 – Sat 28 June 2025

· Sat 19 Apr 2025 – Sat 05 July (for a Finalist)

UNDERGRADUATE CONTINUOUS LICENCE (NON-FINALISTS): 38 weeks

· Freshers arrive on Thursday 3 Oct 2024

· Sat 05 Oct 2024 – Sat 28 June 2025

UNDERGRADUATE CONTINUOUS LICENCE (FINALISTS): 39 weeks

· Sat 05 Oct 2024 – Sat 05 July 2025

POSTGRADUATE LICENCE: 51 weeks

· Sat 28 Sep 2024 – Sat 20 Sep 2025

The Housekeeping Office (Monday to Friday 8.00 am and 4.00 pm) holds a stock of light bulbs (take the old bulb with you to exchange). The Porters’ Lodge also have an emergency stock for when Housekeeping is closed.

If there are problems with your room, kitchen or bathroom that the Maintenance team need to fix, please report them via the online Room Management System.

(If you are reporting a serious immediate problem, such as a flood or a suspected gas leak, please contact the Porters immediately: 01223 335700)

To report

1. Go to https://app.casc.cam.ac.uk/rms_live/
2. You will then be asked to log on.
3. Choose the “click here to login via Raven” option.  For this you will need your Raven Password.

It is quite straightforward, there are instructions on each page, but basically this is all you need to do: –

Once you are logged on, from the drop-down menu click on report a problem

You will now see a page asking for the location of the problem.

You can type something like “Clou”(i.e. for Clough), click on find location.

A table of all floors and rooms will show, click on selection room and then click on select a problem.

Any further information on the matter being reported can be typed into the Further Details box. 

You can store the above link in your favourites list; alternatively, this link is also available on the College’s intranet pages.

Your request may require a member of the College Staff or an external appointed contractor to enter your room. We will aim to respond quickly to your request and we shall assume that you are happy for a maintenance operative to visit your room during the working day [Monday to Friday: 9am – 5pm] unless you state otherwise in the appropriate section of the proforma – then an appointment will be made.

Please remember to inform your housemates if you have reported an issue, to tell them that a member of the Maintenance Department or external contractor will attend unannounced to deal with the issue (unless an appointment was made).

IMPORTANT – Reporting Maintenance Issues out of office hours: 

If you are reporting an issue online out of office hours, please note that this system is only viewed during office hours so if your problem needs urgent attention, for example in the evening or the weekend, please ring the Porters’ Lodge to report your maintenance issue.

Maintenance Response Times 

Some repairs are more urgent than others. The Maintenance Department will aim to deal with any request within 7 working days of receipt

Please do not repeat the same request within this period. Floods of repeat requests hold up work rather than hurrying it along. The priorities assigned to repairs of different types are as follows:

Water or gas leaks

Matters affecting the security of student rooms or the safety of the occupant, for instance a student affected because the lock of her room is broken

Problems affecting the privacy of the occupant (e.g. a broken curtain rail)

Heating, whether gas or electricity

Problems inhibiting the student’s study (e.g. a broken tabletop or central light pendant)

Entry to Rooms

There will be occasions when the Porters, Housekeeping or Maintenance staff or outside contractors will need to enter your room to undertake emergency or regular maintenance work; they will have College identification

Normally notice will be given in advance of a visit but there will be occasions when this is not possible and so your co-operation would be appreciated

All students are informed of their visits, via an email

Please give your full co-operation to ensure that all necessary works are undertaken

• No pets of any kind are allowed (including goldfish) for health & safety reasons.
• There  are some local cats that are very friendly and pop in and out of the College gardens.

Ellgia (our waste contractor) are committed to providing “zero to landfill” solutions and have invested significantly in turning waste that cannot be recycled into waste derived fuel products. In the undergraduate student kitchens, there are two bins, with the option of a food composting bin:

1. A bin with a BLACK bin liner which will be for, glass bottles and jars (any colour), food debris and anything else that cannot go into the mixed recycling bin as shown below.

2. A bin with a CLEAR bin liner which will be for the following items:

· Tin foil

· All plastic bottles, lids, pots, tubs and trays

· Drinks cans

· Paper and cardboard

· Plastic Bags

· Cartons (Tetra packs)

· Empty aerosols

· Plastic film and wrapping (without shiny foil layer inside)

3. Ellgia sends all food waste to a local anaerobic digestion plant, where it is then broken down to produce biogas and bio-fertiliser. We encourage all students to play their part, by signing up for food caddies in kitchens, please contact the Housekeeping Department for more information.

If you are in any doubt about what to put into the mixed recycling bins (with the CLEAR bin liner) then put your rubbish into the BLACK bin liner bin, otherwise you might contaminate the whole bag which will then have to go into the general waste.

The College has a waste management policy

In the postgraduate houses: these properties are classed by the City Council as “domestic” and therefore do not have the “mixed recycling” facility available. The students in these houses usually arrange their own recycling system and then take the rubbish out to the various wheelie bins found just outside the properties. Please see the local notices and posters in each house explaining the system adopted by that house.

In RFB and Grange Garden flats: Ellgia (our waste contractor) are committed to providing “zero to landfill” solutions and have invested significantly in turning waste that cannot be recycled into waste derived fuel products. The students are responsible for moving their rubbish and recycling from the kitchens to the bin stores; usually the students in each block / flat draw up a rota for this. In these kitchens there are two bins with the option of a food composting bin:

1. A bin with a BLACK bin liner which will be for, glass bottles and jars (any colour), food debris and anything else that cannot go into the mixed recycling bin as shown below.
2. A bin with a CLEAR bin liner which will be for the following items:

• Tin foil
• All plastic bottles, lids, pots, tubs and trays
• Drinks cans
• Paper and cardboard
• Plastic Bags
• Cartons (Tetrapacks)
• Empty aerosols
• Plastic film and wrapping (without shiny foil layer inside)

3. Ellgia sends all food waste to a local anaerobic digestion plant, where it is then broken down to produce biogas and bio-fertiliser. We encourage all students to play their part, by signing up for food caddies in kitchens, please contact the Housekeeping Department for more information.

The students then take the bags to the waste bins (which are big 1100L bins). All these bins are green with signs to identify the different waste streams, which are, mixed recycling, general waste, and food bins for any food caddie waste.

If you are in any doubt about what to put into the mixed recycling bins (with the CLEAR bin liner) then put your rubbish into the BLACK bin liner bin, otherwise you might “contaminate” the whole bag which will then have to go into the general waste.

The College has a waste management policy.

Newnham postgraduates are allocated rooms by the Student Accommodation Officer.

Newnham undergraduates going into their 2nd and 3rd years take part in a Room Ballot.

The Room Ballot takes place during the Lent Term for the following academic year.

The Student Accommodation Officer gives the Hall Liaison & Admin Officer (a member of the JCR Committee) a list of all the 1st year students who should be in the Room Ballot in a suitable form to be cut up and drawn from a hat.

The Hall Officer does the draw and lets the Student Accommodation Officer have the resulting list.

All students returning after intermission will be inserted into the signing list at approximately the same level that they were the previous year.

Affiliated students going into their 2nd year have the same arrangements as other students in their year.

The President of the JCR goes to the top of the Room Ballot.

All Modern Linguists and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies students spending the current academic year abroad have previously selected their rooms.

Other students entering their 4th year do not take part in the Ballot but may opt to be considered for a room if one is available.

Some students are able to “squat” in their room for the next academic year. Information is given out prior to the Room Ballot taking place.

Many Newnham students display a plan on their door showing the layout of their room to enable those picking to have a better understanding of the layout.

Further information on the rooms is available in a folder which the JCR Committee will make available.

Further information is given out prior to the Room Ballot taking place.

Room licences are issued by the Student Accommodation Officer and are your Assured Tenancy Agreement. Upon receipt please read the licence carefully.

The College has a Smoke Free Policy. No smoking or vaping is permitted in any College buildings or student rooms. There are designated smoking areas around the College. Please see the above Policy or ask the Porters for the location of these designated areas.

Lockable Storage (undergraduate rooms only)

Each undergraduate room should have some lockable storage – this is shown on your room inventory (which will be in your rooms when you arrive).

This lockable storage can be used during the Christmas and Easter vacations only.

Please check your lockable storage at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term – if this lockable storage doesn’t lock let Maintenance know immediately (using the RMS) so that it can be repaired in good time for the vacation.

Also please inform to the Porters so that any keys that do not work can be removed and discarded.

To allow for auditing and replacements, lockable storage keys should be handed in when signing out at the end of term.

All belongings must be taken home during the Long Vacation.

Storage for Overseas Undergraduate Students during the long vacation (summer)

The Housekeeping Department will inform students about the arrangements for storage during the long vacation (this can normally be found on RMS).

Additional Storage

If you need to store more belongings over the vacation than you are allowed to keep in your room, you may contact your JCR Hall Liaison Officer.

The JCR Hall Liaison Officer can also put you in touch with a storage company – if several Newnham students share that storage, the cost comes down.

Each resident is responsible for purchasing a TV licence for their room if applicable. For information on whether you require a licence please visit:
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one