Paragon: a case study of distance
Tim Arbabzadah gives a brief case study on Paragon, in the wake of the new North Acton halls
Paragon halls are located in Brentford, about six and a half miles from the South Kensington campus of Imperial College London, which is where most students need to be every day. The use of the halls is a temporary stopgap measure; the problem was caused by the last minute renovation of Wilson House. They are a shared halls: Imperial, University of West London and Thames Valley College all share the space. There are 176 rooms for freshers in Paragon, each room costing £155 per week. This does not factor in the travel cost per day that is needed to get into College. They are all single study bedrooms (with en suites) and arranged in cluster flats of eight with a shared kitchen.
Felix contacted Jon Matthews, Paragon Warden, for comment. He said that there “have been difficulties”. He said that it has “always been [a case of] managing expectations”. When asked to highlight the main problem that there is with the halls, he replied: “The main issue is distance from College”. He went on to say: “students spending two hours a day are going to have [a] lesser experience than those spending 20 minutes walking”. This was likely referring to Evelyn Gardens and other closer accommodation. He said that there were not necessarily welfare concerns, but the student experience was diminished in comparison to those students in closer accommodation. He said that the wardening team “do our best, but no matter what events we do, there’s always that commute”. Paragon does have communal space, but it is not exclusively for Imperial. There have reportedly been problems with mixing between the universities. The different universities have attempted to advertise events to each other, however, there has been little uptake so far.
He said that Paragon was College’s “only real option to taking in the students”. The original plan was to house students in Elephant and Castle. This was opposed by the Union last year.
There have been many problems with Paragon this year. The vast majority have been due to the distance. Many students have tried to change halls, and it is believed that there are up to 2-3 complaints per week about the distance. The College website states that Paragon is “ideally located for students studying in central and west London”. However, the commute to and from College has been highlighted by many students as being too long. Paragon Warden, Jon Matthews was asked about the travel time issue. He said: “Door to door travel time is about one hour. Times that I do take the tube, can get back in 45 minutes, but that is with perfect connections. Realistically, looking at about an hour. If one cannot afford to be late [i.e. exam], I would say add 15 minutes on to an hour just in case.” To mitigate this problem there is a shuttle bus available to South Ealing on the Picadilly Line. However it is five days a week and not run by Imperial; Paul Noke, Head of Residential Services and GradPad, previously told Felix that College “pay a small contribution to allow our students access… to the shuttle busses”. Although there are times in the morning when students from Imperial are not allowed to use them. These stop at 8:30pm. There are then MPVs from South Ealing to Paragon until 12:30am, which, for a fresher on a ‘big night out’ is not very late. Plus this is only three days a week, as not enough use has been shown to justify extending it. Much like Paragon, it has been suggested that the social life of having so many students in one area will not be able to take away from the daily commute.
The quality of the accommodation has also been called into question. The College website states the following: “Paragon is a high-quality, award-winning, purpose-built hall of residence in Brentford operated by Touareg Trust, part of the Notting Hill Housing Group.” However, it has been noted that the showers are not very good, as they have low water pressure and do not spray water straight down. The heat has also been noted. It is believed that to get the shower up to a higher temperature, one needs to run a cold tap. The heating has also been highlighted to Felix by an anonymous source. The heating was said to take up to two hours to heat the room, and that the room only stayed warm for a short amount of time. There are more problems, which have been highlighted by the two anonymous accounts in Felix which are linked below.
Although the majority of students in halls this year were not in Paragon, for those that were it was the only first year experience that they will get (barring retaking exams or starting at a different university).
