Cost-of-Living for Students in Belfast: How Queen’s Is Supporting Its Students
By Sean Colligan
The UK is still in the throes of a slowly abating cost-of-living crisis, with the current rate of inflation charted as 3.2% over November 2025, down from 3.6% in October [1]; while still a while away from the Bank of England’s statutory target of 2%, this is a positive sign, even if it means that prices aren’t falling, and are simply just rising at a slower rate. But is it really true that students in Belfast—the university capital of Northern Ireland which supposedly boasts the lowest student cost of living in the UK [2]—have been able to cope with rising food and energy prices? Do we really have it easy? Or are we simply just lucky enough not to be faced with the skyrocketing price of accommodation faced by our peers in Great Britain and across the island of Ireland, especially in Dublin? Is this accolade as cheapest-to-live a worthy award or a consolation prize?
Queen’s University has certainly done much to spread this image, equipped with a cost-of-living calculator on its website that admittedly boasts some pretty stark figures [3]. Their own student accommodation as well as wider private accommodation in Belfast are nearly half the price of what it generalises as ‘London University’, with students from NI additionally benefiting from a tuition fee fifty percent cheaper than their counterparts in Great Britain. Differences with equally pigeonholed ‘North East English’ and ‘Scottish Universities’ are more marginal but still work out in our favour, with the sole exception of Belfast private accommodation inexplicably being twelve pounds dearer than those in the likes of Durham and Newcastle. Thankfully three-pound pints in the Student Union remain intact this side of the Irish Sea.
Students are certainly still facing the pinch, however, with a February 2024 report by Northern Ireland’s national union for students, NUS-USI, highlighting a range of struggles from the pervasive presence of black mould in private rentals, over a third of students skipping meals and three in five students having to work jobs to support their studies [4]. A quarter of those surveyed have been unable to pay rent or bills, with a same amount admitting to considering abandoning their studies due to the pressure the cost-of-living has on them. Support has come in the form of both grassroots initiatives from student unions and universities, with one example being Queen’s creation of The Pantry service to provide staple foods to those in need, but also extra hardship grants and an increase in the maintenance loan arranged by the outgoing economy minister Conor Murphy. These are not perfect solutions—all money a student borrows must be ultimately repaid, and with a total debt of over £5.6 billion recorded across Northern Ireland by the SLC this is clearly a dividend with a catch. It is clear that unless substantial reform is made to the student finance system, these swept-under-the-rug stories of hardship will continue to happen, all the while the larger economy deals with the fallout of an ever-changing and more volatile world.
References
- “Inflation and the 2% target.” Bank of England. 19th November 2025. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation
- “Study in Northern Ireland.” British Council. https://study-uk.britishcouncil.org/why-study/about-uk/uk-nations/northern-ireland
- “Student Living Costs.” Queen’s University Belfast. https://www.qub.ac.uk/Study/belfast/student-living-costs/
- Duncan, Nora. “Cost of Living Report 2024.” NUS-USI. 7 February 2024. https://www.nus-usi.org/cost_of_living_report_2024
