Student room bookings

Students can only use the student booking form for events relating to an society registered with Kent Union. 

For bookings related to your course, contact your Programme Administration team who can make the booking on your behalf. If you need a specific room, the contact can be found under who do I contact to book a room.

For society bookings, only authorised members are allowed to book rooms for their society. If the authorised members change or the President requires additional people to be able to book rooms, please contact Kent Students' Union, who will be able to grant this permission.   

Societies can only book centrally timetabled rooms one term at a time - bookings for the Spring and Summer terms can be made from the final two weeks of the preceding term. Due to high demand for Eliot Hall and other large flat floor spaces, these will be allocated, subject to application at the appropriate time, by Kent Students' Union.

You must provide at least one weeks' notice between your request and the date of the event. We cannot guarantee requests made less than one week in advance will be accommodated.

As the student or society booking the room, you are responsible for the event and ensuring that all of the terms and conditions, listed below, of the room booking are met. There may be penalties if you do not adhere to the below terms and conditions.

You must declare the intended use of the room at the time of the booking. Any changes to this must be notified to the Timetabling Office through which you booked in advance of the event.  

Terms and Conditions

By making a booking request through the Timetabling Office room booking form, you agree to the following terms and conditions:

• When booking a room, the event organiser is responsible for ensuring that the room is suitable for all attendees. Events which are open to all must be held in accessible rooms
• The event organiser is responsible for undertaking risk assessments where necessary.
• As the organiser, you must comply with university fire regulations.
• You may only use rooms that have been booked for your event, you cannot expand you event to other rooms without permission.
• No equipment is to be connected to audio visual (AV) equipment other than via the standard laptop input. Under no circumstances should existing AV equipment be moved or disconnected, nor should PCs be turned off.
• Rooms should be left clean and tidy for subsequent users. This includes cleaning boards and carefully rearranging any moved furniture after use to the standard layout, cleaning up and rubbish left in the rooms, ensuring no damage to either room or furniture (ie by dragging the furniture). Furniture must not be removed from rooms.
• Noise should be kept to a minimum and must not disturb users of neighbouring areas.
• Amplified music is not allowed in teaching rooms.
• Food and drink is not permitted in any teaching rooms.  
• Teaching begins at five minutes past the hour and finishes at five minutes to the hour, allowing time to travel between rooms for consecutive classes. Please show courtesy and promptness when using a booked room.
• Any issues are reported immediately, such as damage to the room or equipment.
• All events must adhere to Kent Union's policies
• Rooms booked under a society may not be offered to another society without first receiving written permission from the Timetabling Office.
• The room may not be used for any commercial purposes.
• Footwear that can mark or damage the hardwood floor in Eliot Hall is not permitted.
• If an event is cancelled for any reason the room booking should be cancelled by informing the Timetabling Office at the earliest opportunity.
• The organisers will compensate the University for the cost of the following:

Injury to persons, damage to university property or any expenses incurred by the University as a direct consequence of the function, any work, including staff costs, in connection with the function that may by prior agreement be done by the staff employed by the University before, during and after the function.

If you breach the terms and conditions

By submitting a room booking request, you will have to agree to the terms and conditions listed below.

Any breach of these terms and conditions, may result in the cancellation of all existing bookings by that student and/or society, and they may not be able to book any rooms from any of the below departments for the remainder of the academic year.

Complaints Procedure

If the Timetabling Office receives a complaint regarding your societies’ usage of a room we will respond to the situation using the following three level procedure.

Level 1: Reminder

Upon receiving a complaint, the Timetabling Office will send a reminder email to the society contact, informing them of the issue, the terms and conditions that may have been broken, and inform them of the following escalation steps if the issue remains unresolved.

Level 2: Official Warning

If a second complaint is received the Timetabling Office will send an official warning to the society, informing them that if a subsequent compliant is received, the societies’ permission to book rooms will be revoked.

Level 3: Sanctions

Consequently, if a third complaint is received, the society will no longer be able to book rooms through the Timetabling Office.

In the event of a serious incident (example: damage to university property or an incident involving the police.) the Timetabling Office may escalate straight to the third level of the complaints procedure, regardless of the level the society is currently at.

Such complaints include but are not limited to:

• Noise level of event
•  Disruption caused to staff in students in the same building
• Removal of cables from PCs or changes made to the AV equipment in rooms
• Damage to the room or its AV equipment
• Rooms being left in a poor state
• Furniture not being returned to its original position
• Failure to follow one of the above terms and conditions

The three complaints received required to trigger each level of escalation do not have to be of the same category or relate to the same incident.

The level of escalation that each society is at will be reset at the start of each academic year to reflect the possible change in leadership and membership of the societies.

The timetabling Office will keep a record of complaints received, communication sent to societies informing them of such complaints, and the level of escalation that societies have reached.    

1. Read the below room booking document, which includes information on:

• Terms and conditions
• Obtaining a licence (if required)
• Receiving external speaker approval (if required)
• Fire safety regulations

2. Book the room (see below for who to contact)

3. Publicise the event: Do not publicise it until after the booking is confirmed.

Use the Timetabling Office's room booking form (term time bookings) or contact the Conference Office (vacation time bookings) for the following rooms:

• Cornwallis
• Darwin (excluding the board room and conference suite)
• Eliot
• Grimond
• Kennedy
• Keynes
• Marlowe
• Pears
• Rutherford
• Sibson
• Templeman library (excluding group study rooms)
• Woolf

If the room you require is not listed above and you need a specific room please use the below table. If you do not need a specific room, contact your Programme Administration team who can make the booking on your behalf.

If an allocated room is not being used or if you need to cancel your booking, please inform the Timetabling Office or the team with whom you made your booking at the earliest opportunity.

Faulty audio visual equipment

Contact Audio Visual Services:

• 01227 82 4888
• Email helpdesk@kent.ac.uk

Building, facilities or broken equipment issues

Contact Estates Customer Services:

• 01227 8 16666
• Email estatescustomerservices@kent.ac.uk