Cost of Living Support Fund

Section 2: How are applications assessed?

This fund is intended to assist as many students as possible, so we have designed a specific assessment process to determine the level of assistance that we may be able to offer you. For detailed information on our assessment process please refer to our guidelines.

When assessing applications we take a holistic approach, considering students' financial circumstances, alongside any specific elements of need or disadvantage.

Please provide as much detail as possible regarding your situation in your supporting statement, so that we can consider all matters when assessing your application.

For example, this might include highlighting if you fall into one of the following categories, and the challenges that might present:

• Care leavers and care experienced students
• Estranged students
• Widening Participation students
• Students with refugee or asylum seeker status

Section 3: What can we support?

We can support students with living costs they may be struggling to meet whilst studying, including private accommodation costs, utilities, food shopping, study related costs e.g. placement travel costs etc. However, note that this does not include laptops/desktops/tablets.

2022/23 academic year: If you are struggling to meet day to day expenses as a result of increased energy costs, or being threatened with the loss of basic utility services then please consider applying to the Cost of Living Support Fund.

Please note that this fund is to help students experiencing unforeseen circumstances or unexpected financial hardship. Therefore, we generally can only support students who have started their course with adequate funding in place.

What do we mean by adequate funding? 

We would expect students to commence their studies with adequate funding in place to cover both their tuition fees and expected living costs - these are published on our website: Cost of Living.

Section 4: Application process

An application will generally take 30 minutes to complete.

As part of the application, we request relevant documents from the following checklist:

Document checklist

Please have these documents to hand, ideally in pdf format, before you start your application.

To start your application please click on the following link:

Start application

If you are struggling with the application form please refer to our step by step guidance..

Once you click ‘submit’ on your online application, you will receive an acknowledgement of your application, including a copy of the above checklist of supporting documents that you will need to provide. 

Our assessment time can vary depending on the complexity and number of applications received. Please note as of 29th November 2022, due to a recent surge in applications, it is currently taking up to four weeks for us to complete assessment of applications after receipt of all supporting documentation. 

If successful, you will be notified via email and can expect to receive payment within five working days, provided you have submitted your bank details online.