A Guide to applying for additional funding based on Compelling Personal Reasons (CPR).

A student may have to suspend / withdraw/ repeat part of / change their course for many reasons. If the reasons are due to a personal situation, usually unforeseen, this is known as being due to ‘Compelling Personal Reasons’ (CPR). Compelling personal reasons could be:

· Bereavement

· Mental health issues

· Health issues

· Family crisis

· Caring responsibilities

· Pregnancy, please note this list is not exhaustive.

It is not usually considered to be CPR if a student just doesn’t like their course - the reasons must be beyond the student’s control and relate to their personal circumstances. However, each case will be considered on its merits, so it is a good idea to speak to an adviser about your reasons for repeating or changing course.

How will claiming CPR help?

Students are, generally, entitled to tuition fee loan funding for the length of the current course plus one year (a 'gift year'), minus any years or part years of previous study. Therefore, repeating part of a course or changing course can mean that you don't have enough years of tuition fee loan funding to cover all years of your current course. In this case, funded years are usually applied to the later years of the current course. However, SFE have discretion to award an additional year of tuition fee funding, in addition to the standard entitlement to be allocated, if you were unable to complete a year (or more than one year) due to compelling personal reasons. A CPR year will not be treated as a year spent on a previous course when calculating funding entitlement for a future course, e.g., if you change course again. If additional tuition fee funding is awarded on this basis, it will be allocated to the first available year(s) that you don't currently have fee support for on the current course.

How to apply for CPR

As soon as you’ve applied for student finance, you should send a letter to SFE, with appropriate evidence, asking for your compelling personal reasons to be taken into account for your funding entitlement, explaining what your compelling personal reasons were and how they affected your ability to study at the time (i.e. how they led to you needing to repeat a year, or led to you leaving your most recent previous course). You should include the following:

· Your details – name, DOB, Customer Reference Number, and course title / university name

· Which academic year you would like SFE to consider your CPRs for (and details of that course/ university, if different from your current one), i.e., which year(s) was affected by the CPR

· Date(s) of your interruption/suspension/withdrawal, if applicable.

You need to give enough information for SFE to be able to understand what your situation was and how and when it impacted on your studies. For example

If your CPR are due to ill health: think about your symptoms and how they affected your ability to study (e.g., physical, psychological, emotional), and how they prevented you from completing the year at university.

It will be important to ensure that you include evidence from a professional to substantiate your claim for CPR

Additional information and guidance about applying for additional funding due to CPR can be found here:

https://www.ucas.com/finance/student-finance-england/going-back-uni-or-repeating-year

If your application for CPR is accepted, you should receive an email advising you that your CPR application has been accepted and what year this additional year of support has been awarded to

If you were applying for multiple years affected by CPR, check whether you have had additional funding granted for more than one year. If this is not clear, contact SFE or the advice team:https://www.upsu.com/advice/

If your application for CPR is not accepted, you can seek further advice from the advice team. You may be able to appeal or submit additional evidence. However, if your CPR application is still not accepted, you would need to self-fund your tuition fees for the year(s) you are not entitled to a tuition fee loan. You can discuss this with an adviser, but you will need to consider carefully how you will afford to do this. It is advisable to consider and make a realistic plan for this before you enrol and become liable for the fees. Also, enrolling will count as a further year of study, and so will be considered when assessing your entitlement to funding. Therefore, it's important to be sure of how you can pay your fees before you enrol.