When Max Rayne House was fully evacuated in August after its fire detection system failed, it looked like an isolated emergency. But the evacuation was far from the first major disruption residents had faced that year.
A review of UCL correspondence and resident accounts by The Cheese Grater shows that Max Rayne had spent much of the 2025–26 academic year cycling through failures of essential services like heating and water supply, despite repeatedly assuring residents that the faults had been resolved.
Early Failings
Documented heating problems at Max Rayne appeared soon after the start of the academic year. On 19 October, UCL’s maintenance team said all reported issues had been attended to and resolved. Contractors were back almost immediately.
Further boiler works were carried out between 17 and 21 November leaving heating and hot water intermittently unavailable. UCL directed residents needing showers to Denys Holland Lodge – an undergraduate hall in the same compound – meaning 370 students had to share facilities intended for just 100.
Two weeks later, “longer-term solution” new boiler parts were installed. However, on 4 January, Max Rayne lost its water supply altogether due to a fault with the building’s water tank. Engineers were unable to restore service immediately, leaving residents once again reliant on neighbouring halls for basic facilities: toilets, showers, and laundry. With no running water, residents were also unable to cook in a hall that is entirely self-catered.
The problem reappeared in March with another loss of heating and hot water that required repairs taking place between the 10 and 14 March. Portable radiators were provided and residents again were directed to share the Denys Holland facilities. The December fix had not been as longterm as intended. The August evacuation was a deterioration of an already dismal situation for Max Rayne residents.
Moving the goalposts
Students were evacuated to Ian Baker House and Schafer House between 7 and 12 August. The first group to leave were initially told they would be returning on the 12th, but residents were not reinstated until the 28th. With students being told their relocation would only be brief, many had not packed everything they needed for an extended stay.
One student left behind the formal clothes she needed for a work event. Another told The Cheese Grater she had to eat out repeatedly as she had left behind groceries and cooking equipment. Another student, relocated to Schafer House in August, told us they had to make “multiple unavoidable trips between Schafer House and 109 Camden every day”.
When the shower in the temporary flat broke, the resident said they had “had to visit Max Rayne every day for the last four days to shower”.
The original relocations had also happened at extremely short notice. Residents who moved to New Hall were given just five hours notice before the relocation deadline. For some, that meant cancelling plans or on-the-spot requests for time off work simply to return and collect what they needed.
Access to the building to retrieve needed items was restricted to between 8am and 4pm, and residents were warned that they would have to identify themselves to security and could, “depending on the circumstances”, be escorted to and from their rooms.
The end of the evacuation provided only minimal respite. Residents had barely made it back through the doors before Max Rayne lost hot water again and engineers were recalled.
Compensated, eventually
While Max Rayne residents had been denied compensation for issues prior to the evacuation, August’s events made that position harder to maintain.
Students received £30 daily as a food allowance during the relocation alongside reimbursement for taxi journeys. However, the allowance was credited retrospectively, meaning students had to cover costs upfront.
UCL later went further, agreeing to a 25% rent reduction for the period residents spent away from Max Rayne, capped at 22 days, alongside the existing food allowance and taxi reimbursements.
One student told The Cheese Grater, “As someone who’s just gotten a full-time job and doesn’t have that much hard cash on hand, it was very financially tough to figure out”. At the time of writing, she said she was still waiting for the money.
UCL Accommodation was careful in describing this as a “discretionary goodwill gesture”, rather than “an admission of liability”. But the explanation accompanying it was unusually candid. The university acknowledged “short-notice changes”, disruption caused by kitchen closures and the relocation, and concerns over “notice periods, frequency of updates, clarity of information provided, and the handling of complaints”.
They conceded there were “lessons to be learned”. Getting the money to residents proved less straightforward.
On 4 September, UCL told residents that applying for the credits was a manual process and due to the number of people affected, it was “taking some time to complete”. It assured them that “all credits that have been communicated and are due to residents will be issued”.
By mid-September, residents were nevertheless still comparing figures in the Max Rayne group chat and trying to work out what individual payments actually represented. One reported receiving £534; another £595.88, labelled simply “residence compensation”. Others said they had yet to receive anything.
A Lesson Learned?
By the end of the summer, residents’ frustration was no longer about any single outage or delayed return date.
UCL had repeatedly found ways to manage the immediate consequences of failure, whether by sending residents elsewhere to shower, providing portable radiators, relocating them to other halls or eventually offering compensation.
That frustration also cut against what some residents thought they were paying university accommodation to provide. “As students, we trusted uni accommodation for this sole reason, that we wouldn’t have to worry about [all these things]”, one resident said.
Whether UCL’s “lessons to be learned” amount to more than just better arrangements for the next failure remains to be seen.
A UCL spokesperson said:
“We apologise for the disruption that students living in Max Rayne House experienced last year due largely to unexpected issues.
“In the case of the flooding incident, those affected were quickly offered alternative accommodation, a rent reduction and help with food allowance costs.
Our priority is always the safety and wellbeing of our residents and we are committed to taking on board feedback and applying any lessons learned."