Taking a Leave of Absence

One of the conditions of your visa is that you are engaged in full-time study whilst you are in the UK. If you decide to take a leave of absence, you will not be engaged in full-time study for the duration of the absence and you should therefore return to your home country unless there is a reason you are unable to do so.

If the reason for your leave of absence is medical and you are too sick to travel home then try to retain as much medical evidence as you can so that you can demonstrate to the Home Office why you did not leave the UK.

If you take a leave of absence, you will delay the end date of your course and you will probably need to extend your visa in order to complete your studies. When you do this, the Home office will ask why your course is taking longer to complete than originally intended. With your application, you will need to provide evidence that your leave of absence was authorised by the University and an explanation of why you took the leave of absence. Explain what you did during your leave of absence (and include any evidence if possible) e.g. returned home for 5 months, came back to UK a month before studies began to look for accommodation).

If you did not leave the UK during your leave of absence then you must provide evidence of the reasons why not, as well as documentary proof and an explanation of how you financially supported yourself during that period. For instance if your sponsor continued to send you money, you should enclose a letter from them declaring that they were aware of the leave of absence and continued to sponsor you, plus copies of your bank statements for that period and any other financial information of yours and your sponsors that will confirm that your sponsor sent you money during or for this period.

N.B. by remaining in the UK whilst on a leave of absence, you have broken the conditions of your visa and even with all of the above documentary evidence, the Home Office could still refuse to grant you extra leave to remain. If the Home office discover that you are or have been working full-time rather than studying, they will remove you from the UK. Any future visa applications could be affected.

You must not take up full-time employment during your leave of absence.