UWE Bristol students placed in halls in Newport, Wales

Students at university in Bristol are being housed in accommodation across the River Severn in Wales.

More than 120 first-year students are living in Newport as the Bristol-based University of the West of England (UWE) has run out of accommodation.

Some of the students living in Wales say they are missing out on the full university experience.

UWE says it is organising social events for them and looking at how it can subsidise their travel.

A group of 127 students are paying between £121 and £152 a week for a room in the Newport Student Village - 27 miles from the main UWE campus.

Newport Student Village is normally used by students at the University of South Wales which has a campus in the city.

Reina Sniezek said: "It's been difficult because of the prices of the trains, and because of the distance I have to wake up an hour earlier, compared to other students who can wake up 10 minutes before their lectures."

The students' journeys to UWE involve a 25-minute train journey from Newport to Filton Abbey Wood station, then a bus to the Frenchay campus.

Johny Hughes said he felt socialising was "really tough" for the students living in Wales.

"There are not many places to go out here in Newport, and everyone's going out in Bristol, at UWE," he said.

"If we did want to go out [in Bristol] I think we'd have to get a Megabus home at one or two in the morning - it's really not ideal."

Prof Steve West, vice-chancellor at UWE, said: "We're working with the students [in Newport], and student community, providing pizza nights and other fun nights to bring a sense of community there."

He said halls representatives were being allocated to the Newport contingent, and that UWE was working out a way to pay additional funds to them to help with travel costs.

There are 900 student rooms being built on the Frenchay campus, and the university plans to build enough accommodation for another 2,500 students in the next two years.

Nick Hillman from the Higher Education Policy Institute, an independent think tank, said the issue was partly due to Bristol's popularity among undergraduates.

"It's a wonderful place to live as a young student," he said.

"That's the biggest cause, but there are other factors, such as the fact there are more 18-year olds this year than there were last year, which is because of what happened to the birth rate a few years ago.

"I do feel for these students because they want to live in Bristol, they want to study in Bristol and they find they're actually commuting from somewhere else."

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