How to submit an appeal

Are not usually admissible. These may not be verifiable and if others have been recorded without their knowledge then they have not consented to this use of the recording.

Will be required if the documents are not in English. It is expected that you will provide the original document and the translation for comparison. Translations should be carried out by a professional translation service and must not be by you yourself or someone with whom you have a personal or close relationship.

Are not required. However, if you have experienced a significant bereavement, you should explain in your appeal how you knew this person, when their death occurred and how it impacted on your assessments. If your mental health has been affected by a significant bereavement*, you may be able to evidence this with your own medical evidence or evidence that you have engaged with a support service. This should relate to the time of the assessments.

Because mitigating circumstances requests submitted at the time of the assessment can be made without providing a death certificate, there is a greater expectation when raising this retrospectively in an appeal to explain why a timely mitigating circumstances claim was not made. This may be supported by providing your own medical evidence showing that your judgement was impaired at the time.

*Significant bereavement: This means the deceased was significant to you, not necessarily a relative

May be used as evidence. It is helpful to arrange these in chronological order if possible. Avoid duplication; if there is a trail of email correspondence, the most recent one may contain the whole conversation and in that case there is no need to provide all of the emails separately.

If you have declared your disability* to AccessAbility, then it is not usually necessary to provide medical evidence in the event of a flare-up of your condition. However, if you have not made your condition known then evidence pertaining to the time of the assessments will be required and you should explain why it was not possible for you to have notified the University of your disability or long-term condition sooner.

*Disability: The Equality Act (2010) defines a person as having a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

May be used as evidence. It is expected that a letter will be written on letterheaded* stationery and will be signed and dated. If this is not the case, please provide any other evidence you may have to verify the authenticity of the letter. For example, if the letter was emailed to you, you can provide that email with your evidence to show the email addresses of the sender and recipient, and the date and time.

*Letterheaded: The letterhead usually displays the company’s logo, business address and contact details.

Are not acceptable evidence. Evidence should be from an independent third-party* and usually someone who has awareness of your mitigating circumstances in a professional capacity. For example, this could be a Counsellor or Therapist or other support service that you consulted at the time of the assessments. It is expected that such evidence would be on letterheaded stationery, signed and dated.

*Third-party: Evidence should come from a source other than you or your relatives or friends. Usually this will be from someone who knows you in a professional capacity such as a medical practitioner, therapist or support worker.

Usually refers to a letter from a medical practitioner based on their assessment of your condition. It is expected that the date of your consultation will be from the same period as the assessments you wish to appeal. Evidence from consultations occurring after the release of results will not be acceptable. Appointment letters on their own may not be sufficient as they do not confirm that the appointment was attended or provide any medical opinion. Documentation issued retrospectively (after symptoms have resolved) are typically not accepted as these usually rely on self-reported symptoms rather than contemporaneous medical observation.

It is not necessary for the consultation to have taken place in the UK, but in most cases, it will be based on an in-person assessment, rather than an online or video-call.

Campus-based students are advised to register with the Victoria Park Health Centre upon registration so that they have access to local General Practitioner (GP) in case a medical issue should arise. It is not necessary for medical evidence to be from this Surgery, but a letter from a UK GP or from NHS medical records are usually able to be considered so please do provide this if possible.

May not be acceptable evidence. For the prevention of psychological harm to the staff processing appeals, please do not provide graphic images such as photographs of accidents, injuries or deceased relatives or pets.

Photographs or scanned copies of documents may be accepted, but as with screenshots; please ensure the important information such as letterhead, sender details and issue date are visible.

Photographs of medicines are not accepted as this does not state what condition the medication was prescribed for. Prescriptions or prescription labels may state your name and may have a date, but this alone is not usually sufficient. For example, it may be a repeat prescription meaning the date shown may not correlate to the time of the assessment.

Photographs of broken laptops, car accidents, or other similar incidents are not acceptable evidence as they cannot be verified.

May be used as evidence, but you should ensure all the important information is visible in the image. For example, if you are taking a screenshot of an email, make sure the email address of the sender and recipient are visible, and the date and time it was sent.

If providing screenshots from a smartphone, for example of text messages, these will usually be in an image format (IMG). If you are sending a series of these, consider copying and pasting the images into a Word document in chronological order so that these can be attached as one document and presented in a coherent order.

Screenshots of call logs are not acceptable evidence as it does not provide the contents of the conversation. For example, a record that you dialled your GP’s number is not medical evidence.

Are acceptable evidence for consideration. It is expected that you will request the letter before submitting the appeal. Please discuss with your support adviser what you would like them to disclose in the letter, and let them know your appeal deadline. If they are unable to provide the letter within the deadline, please submit your appeal on-time and explain that this evidence has been requested.

Due to the urgency of processing appeals in a timely manner, it may not always be possible to wait for evidence, but we will endeavour to do so where possible, and where a timely request has been made i.e. not after the appeal deadline has passed.

This evidence may be presented, but whether or not it can be considered depends on the context of the appeal. For example, this type of evidence may be more difficult to read or verify as it may be handwritten or may not include contact details. Ailments may be referred to by terminology not used in western medicine, and the credentials of the practitioner may not be recognised in the UK.

Students are advised not to rely upon evidence from alternative therapies given the requirements of the Mitigating Circumstances Policy for evidence to be from a qualified medical practitioner.