Timing of Appeals

You will have a ten working-day window in which you may submit a Formal Appeal. This window begins on the day on which you are officially notified of an APAC decision. Typically, this will be the progression notification as the end of a stage of study, such as the release of your end of year results or, if required, the release of your reassessment results.

As an example of the ten working-day window: if your end of year results and progression decision is notified to you on Friday 16th June; the ten working-day appeal period closes on Friday 30th June.

If you submit your appeal early i.e. before the ten working-day window opens, you will very likely be told that your appeal cannot be considered at this time.

Please be aware that assessment results released to you during the course of the year are indicative or provisional marks only i.e. they might still be subject to change. As such, the decisions relating to those marks are not yet formalised as the APAC will not yet have made their decision on those marks. The same applies to decisions made by the Mitigation Committee, who report into the APACs at the close of the academic year. Therefore, until those marks and decisions have been finalised by the APAC, any appeal will be deemed to be ‘too early’ and you will be advised to resubmit it following the formal APAC notification, if you still feel you have grounds to do so.

The main exception to this would be if your case relates to severe mitigating circumstances (such as hospitalisation) which meant that you were unable to apply for mitigation for your assessment(s) using the mitigation process at the normal time for mitigation applications. In such cases, you will be required to provide evidence that you were unable to apply for mitigation at the appropriate time, and a judgement will be made as to whether or not your appeal can be considered early.

An appeal submitted later than the ten working-day window will normally only be considered in very exceptional circumstances.

Such circumstances would likely be where you can evidence that you were unable to engage with the procedures at the appropriate time. In such cases, you will be required to provide evidence that you were unable to submit your appeal within the normal timeframe, and a judgement will be made as to whether or not your appeal can be considered late.

The University has strict timescales in appeal cases to be equitable to all students, and to ensure that the student body is treated consistently. The University can only accept a late appeal if a reasonable ground for late submission can be presented, as stated in section 4.4.