The country’s biggest provider of accommodation for university students, Scape, says it will stand down 20 per cent of its 450-strong workforce and tell builders on five sites nationally to stop work by March if there is no help for international students from national cabinet on Friday.

Scape’s chairman and the head of the Purpose Built Student Accommodation Working Group, Craig Carracher, said the occupancy rate at Scape’s 754-bed building at Swantson Street in central Melbourne was down to 15 per cent.