Manchester is one of the cheapest places in the UK for students to live, as revealed in the NatWest Student Living Index. The index takes account of student income and living costs to calculate a score for university towns and cities across the UK.
The NatWest Student Living Index surveyed 3,052 students to determine the most affordable place to study. The survey takes into account how much students spend on going out and the income they earn from part-time work.
This year has shown that rent has increased by an average of 30% for students, with the national average monthly rent now at £591.90. However, supermarket spend continues to be the second biggest outlay for students outside of rent, with monthly spend seeing a sizeable jump- it’s up by 44% year-on-year, rising to £109.57 each month.
In Edinburgh, students have a monthly term-time income of £1,453, the lowest of all the cities ranked, while their total monthly spending stands at £1,072.61. London is the most expensive city in the UK for students to rent, with an average cost of £840.30 per month, removing Manchester from the top spot last year.
In contrast to Edinburgh, Bournemouth tops the list of UK cities as the most affordable, taking the top spot from Cardiff. Higher-than-average term-time incomes contributed to Bournemouth being named the most affordable student location.
Manchester closely followed Cardiff and Bournemouth as one of the cheapest cities for student living with the average monthly term time income being £2,736.47. On average, the total monthly expenditure for Manchester students was recorded as £1,050.04.
The NatWest Student Living Index
Average – 0.45
Edinburgh – 0.74
Glasgow – 0.68
London – 0.59
Coventry – 0.58
Liverpool – 0.53
Cambridge – 0.52
Nottingham – 0.52
Lancaster – 0.52
Bristol – 0.46
Sheffield – 0.45
York – 0.45
Leicester – 0.44
Oxford – 0.40
Birmingham – 0.40
Leeds – 0.39
Manchester – 0.38
Newcastle – 0.37
Portsmouth – 0.36
Lincoln – 0.34
Cardiff – 0.32
Bournemouth – 0.31
And surprise, surprise, London is now the most expensive place for a pint, with students expecting to pay £5.51 per drink, followed by Cambridge with an expected average cost of £5.07. This contrasts with Lancaster, where students can expect to pay just £3.81.
The index also found that students in the north spend the most amount of time on home entertainment, with Manchester students spending on average of 37.26 hours per month.
Discover all the findings from the NatWest Student Living Index 2023 here.