If for any reason your personal circumstances have made it so that you aren’t able to submit an assignment on time, you may be eligible for mitigating circumstances. Mitigating Circumstances grants you an extension on your deadline of varying lengths based on your personal situation, usually, this is up to three weeks. You will need to detail the things that are going on for you, and in a lot of cases provide evidence for these. Examples of things you can submit as a mitigating circumstance are physical/mental health issues, bereavement, or hard personal life circumstances.

The Students' Union can be there to support you throughout this process. Whether you are unsure if you have a case or not, you need help with the form, or you just would like someone to support and guide you throughout the process, the Students' Union can help. Please contact advice.su@uca.ac.uk for more information.

It is best practice to submit your claim before the deadline. UCA asks that claims should be submitted no later than 5pm on the given assessment deadline. If it is a presentation, exam or something of that nature you should submit your claim before the start of this assessment – preferably by 5pm the evening before.

If you submit it late, UCA will only consider the claim in exceptional circumstances, and only up to 10 working days after the given deadline. In other words, you cannot apply for mitigating circumstances if the deadline has passed by 10 working days. If you submit late for whatever reason, you will be expected to provide justification for this reason, stating why you were unable to submit the claim on time. Whether or not that will be accepted depends on your own personal circumstances and whether your reason is considered justified by UCA.

You do need to submit evidence for your mitigating circumstances claim, though please do not let a lack of evidence stop you from making a claim. Each claim is assessed based on that individual case, and the university does understand that you may not have documentation for every single thing that you have gone through. You can talk to the Students' Union surrounding your evidence and our Advice and Wellbeing Coordinator will be happy to advise on whether it seems sufficient. Email us at advice.su@uca.ac.uk.

Your course leader will decide whether the evidence is sufficient. Examples of evidence might include (but are not limited to):

• Evidence of a physical or mental health condition that occurred during the period around the assessment date, this can include a letter from your GP or from other support services such as mental health support groups.
  
• Written confirmation from the Disability, Learning Support, Wellbeing or Counselling team at UCA to confirm your relationship with the support service, outlining that you have previously or are continuing to receive support.
  
• In the case of bereavement, you may need to present a death certificate. If the death occurred outside of the time period of the deadline, you may need to outline how this has had an ongoing effect on you. This can be hard to work through and you can come to the Students' Union for support with this. Contact us at the email address above.
  
• If you do not have evidence available at the time of submitting the form, you may be granted a further deadline to submit. If you aren’t able to meet this deadline, the claim will be considered in the absence of evidence.
  
• If evidence is in a foreign language, you will need to have it translated prior to submission.
  

You should send your form, along with the evidence of your claims to the campus registry office for your campus, contact them at:

• Canterbury: campusregistrycanterbury@uca.ac.uk 
• Epsom: campusregistryepsom@uca.ac.uk
• Farnham: campusregistryfarnham@uca.ac.uk 

As UCA do offer learning support who you are expected to be signed up with during your studies, usually your learning disability alone will not be sufficient for a mitigating circumstances claim. This being said, there are some circumstances where your disability will be considered:

• If it can be evidenced that the university has failed to provide you with the support you need, or not delivered on something outlined in your learning support agreement.
  
• If you have recently been diagnosed, or are in the process of receiving a diagnosis, and have not yet received sufficient support from the university and had effective study strategies outlined.
  
• The university does recognise that some students with disabilities, and long term medical conditions, may from time to time experience adverse impacts on their ability to study or meet deadlines due to a deterioration in health and wellbeing which arise from that condition.