Barker House, newcastle-upon-tyne

Place is nice for what you pay for but the staff and management is completely terrible. Delays. No help in returning your deposit telling you to find it yourself when they could at the very least tell me which organization is holding is as they LEGALLY should have this recorded. Joke of management

Barker House has been my accommodation for the past two years, and it has been a fantastic place to stay. It is located in a calm and beautiful neighbourhood, with easy access to the university, shops, and other facilities. The environment is peaceful, comfortable, and ideal for students. I would highly recommend Barker House to anyone looking for good accommodation.

my time at barker house has been quite good overall, just a few issues here and there. the receptionist, robbie, helps as much as as he can whenever I come to him with a complaint. He is quite prompt with sending out emails if needed, and is chatty and friendly. a lot of events and free stuff, particularly the fruit fridays, free breakfast items and the coffee machine. i don’t know of a lot of accomodation that offer stuff like this on a regular basis, and I think for how much we pay it’s really nice that it is. events are quite regular too, different ones every week. the rooms themselves are really nice, but as someone stated there is no soundproofing, even from other floors. The en suite rooms themselves were clean when I arrived but the kitchen was absolutely covered in cobwebs (like seemingly really old cobwebs), and massive spiders here and there. My room also has a lot of cobwebs and spiders but not to the extent of the kitchen and I managed those as soon as possible. Really, the cons are more to do with housemates which isn’t really in the accomodation’s control. Multiple times i had to report food theft and housemates using my things, and nothing stopped until I had to use my own money to buy lockboxes for the fridge and freezer, and move all my stuff into my bedroom. Robbie the receptionist had tried his best with emails and even printed out warnings, but eventually had to deal with it myself. This has ruined the experience of otherwise a really lovely accommodation. I’m in my last year and it has definitely been one of my favourites I’ve stayed in, ignoring the theft. I will add, the shower gets really cold at random times. Leaving it to run for a while doesn’t make it warmer so I sometimes end up with cold showers. The shower head itself came covered in mold, I think? I’m not even too sure but theres black spots on it. It was announced at one point during the year that something was being done to them but I’ve no clue if they actually did as I came back to exactly the same thing.

I do not use my government name on Google reviews. Despite literally stating in response to an earlier review that they do not offer ‘free’ things only in exchange for good reviews, the receptionist is once again at it. A message was sent round that in exchange for specifically a five star review on the student crowd, the first ten students to do so would receive a £10 greggs voucher. I mean, how is this allowed?