New Kent Road

49th in London

Reviews

Charlie Wetton

I have never experienced a more dreadful place to live until I was forced into New Kent Road for Summer accommodation after spending a wonderful year living in the excellent Dante Road. I want to start by hoping that I will be able to post this review at all as my Wi-FI cannot get above one bar. It took me nearly 60 seconds to load this page alone. I would say don't despair as there is an ethernet port in the room. But whether it works or not depends on what room you are in. I have already been forced to move from the room I started Summer accommodation in for four weeks. I am now spending my remaining two and a half weeks in another room due to kitchen renovations. I think it's easier to just list the issues and then expand on them. . Internet -Wi-Fi speeds are atrocious for a university halls of residence located in central London. See the attached screenshot. https://imgur.com/DHc2UAv Whilst cropping that image I also got this. https://imgur.com/eiLOHyM Neither is uncommon sadly. The first New Kent room I stayed in at least had a functioning ethernet port. This new room though has no working ports. In my first room, streaming 1080P on Wi-Fi was impossible but on ethernet it was manageable. You had to accept 720 if you were on Wi-Fi. The new room though, if you want to stream 1080, forget it, if you want to stream or watch anything in 720, you better accept a lot of buffering. No worries though as 480 works pretty well uninterrupted and 360 runs like a dream. . Showers and bathrooms. - This is a total disgrace all round. In my first New Kent room. There was a toilet with a sink in one room and a toilet, sink and bathtub in the other. Because hot water comes from a water boiler, there is only a certain amount meaning baths are just impossible. The "shower" is a tube connected to the bath taps, however if you thought that you could still enjoy a flow of water, you are sadly wrong. You cannot even stand up in the shower. Why? The pressure is simply to weak to transport a paltry amount of water up a one meter tube. Therefore you must sit down in the bathtub enjoying a trickle of cold water. It has to be cold because the hot tap on its own does not provide enough water to reach the end of the tube. The new room has pretty much the same setup. Except there are two full bathrooms with a toilet, sink and bathtub with shower attached. Both have pathetic levels of water pressure, no shower curtain and the showers are actually locked into a position that means you must sit down to shower. Again, no water pressure not only means, slow uncomfortable showers but also cold as well. You'd think there could not be any more problems with the bathrooms. Well one of the toilets in the bathroom will give you a flush that does not last two seconds. Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to going in that bathroom over the next couple of weeks. . Kitchens - Kitchens are now going through renovations and to be fair, the new one I have just gotten looks the part for sure. However, this kitchen serves 6 people with one sink and one tiny cooker. Coming from Dante where you got two cookers and two sinks, it is wholly impracticable. Also, the shiny new kitchen sink gives out hot water so slowly, you cannot wash up in the sink without using cold water. . Reception - Dante Road offers a reception building with 24/7 service including reception staff 7 days a week up to 10pm on weekdays. All your mail and parcels are delivered here and you can pick it up pretty much anytime, either the receptionists will hand it over, or the nightime security officer. This makes receiving and picking up mail incredibly easy. In New Kent though, because the entrance is behind a massive and inconvenient metal gate, they have decided that such service is not necessary. Instead, you are stuck with a reception working in office hours 9-5 Monday to Friday. When mail is delivered outside of these hours, they are supposed to call the halls ambassador on duty who will come down and collect it. If you want to get your mail outside these hours, you have to do the same. So if you work during the week, you have to call someone to come down and give you your mail. There really is zero upside to New Kent Road. It is a horrible horrible place. Every little thing seems almost designed to make the experience worse. Some may say you "get what you pay for". Well, the thing is you don't. You pay the exact same amount to stay in Dante Road as you do to live in New Kent. If these were two competing businesses, New Kent would have shut down years ago. It is a total disgrace, it has soured what has been a wonderful university experience for me so far and I am thankful I am not staying here again next academic year. There really is not enough underselling of this horrible place. If ANYONE is considering staying here. Please please please, do not, apply for another halls, live privately, live on the street as anything is better than this disgusting place. Also, this is the view from some rooms. https://imgur.com/cDzOZSV

Anonymous

Location is amazing. 4-5 minute walk to the tube station. Right next to sainsburys tescos and a shoping centre. 6-7 minutes walk from the uni. There are lots of pubs and clubs nearby and the best of everything is that it's central and nearly everything you want is literally 15 minutes away. Residence amazing people are friendly, and i get to hang out with people from different countries and cultures. I would recomend this to anyone.

Anonymous

Location is amazing. 4-5 minute walk to the tube station. Right next to sainsburys tescos and a shoping centre. 6-7 minutes walk from the uni. There are lots of pubs and clubs nearby and the best of everything is that it's central and nearly everything you want is literally 15 minutes away. Residence amazing people are friendly, and i get to hang out with people from different countries and cultures. I would recomend this to anyone.

Anonymous

Well proportioned rooms with a very fair rent. Perfect distance walk to uni and the rest of the city.

Anonymous

Good sized rooms for a very fair rent in zone 1 that are perfectly placed to get to uni and the rest of the city.