Special circumstances

Special circumstances is normally only available when your personal circumstances prevent you from completing your study within the lifetime limit for Student Allowance.

You can get more weeks of Student Allowance if you've had something significant happen in your life that means you haven’t been able to complete your study within your limit.

It could be that you had a serious:

• illness that put you out of action for some time (eg, glandular fever)
• accident and ended up in hospital for a while.

Or you may have other special circumstances, eg you've been in a Civil Defence emergency, like a flood or earthquake.