Advice Service Agreement

When you use the Advice Service, we will support you in a way that is independent, fair, confidential and respectful.

We are independent

The University of Lancashire Students’ Union is separate from the University of Lancashire.

We are an independent charity. We act in the interests of students.

We are impartial

We will give you advice based on your situation, your options and the relevant university rules. Our staff will not let personal views or bias affect the support you receive.

We will not be hostile towards the university for the sake of it. Where needed, we will help you understand your rights, prepare your case and make your voice heard.

If there is a conflict of interest, we will manage this fairly. Where possible, different students will be supported by different advisers. If this is not possible, we may support students in the order they contacted us.

We are non-judgemental

You can come to us with a range of concerns. We will not judge you or how your situation happened. We will only ask for information that helps us understand your case. Please be open and honest with us as this helps us give you accurate advice.

We are empowering

Our role is to help you understand your options and this means telling you the reality about your case. We will explain what you can do, what might happen next and any risks you may need to think about.

We may use our experience to help you think things through. We will not pressure you to choose a particular option. Your case remains yours and we will support you to make your own decisions.

We are confidential

We keep your case records securely. We store electronic records on a secure case management system for up to 7 years from your last contact with us.

If we receive paper documents, we store them securely, upload them to our system as soon as possible, and then destroy the paper copies.

We will not share your personal information or case details outside the service unless:

• - you give us permission
• - we believe there is a serious risk of harm to you or someone else
• - the law says we must share the information

Where possible, we will talk to you before sharing information.

If we cannot speak to you first, we will follow safeguarding and data protection procedures.

If a data breach happens, we will tell you what has happened, what information was affected and what we have done in response.

We are inclusive

The Advice Service is open to all students. We want every student to feel safe, respected and able to use the service. We ask all students to respect the privacy of others who may also be using the service.

We are accessible

If you need adjustments to use our service, please tell us so that we can support you. 

We will listen to what you need and record agreed adjustments on your case file. This means staff can be aware of your needs before they support you.

Sometimes we may ask for evidence, such as a needs assessment or guidance from a qualified professional. This helps us understand what adjustments are reasonable.

Our staff are not disability assessors, so we may need professional guidance in some cases.

To help us support you and other students fairly, we ask that you work with us in the following ways.

Contact us as early as possible

The Advice Service is often very busy. We may not be able to support you fully if you contact us at short notice.

You are responsible for meeting any deadlines set by university procedures or agreed with your adviser.

Please contact us as early as you can and allow time for us to respond.

We assess each case and allocate resource based on the needs of all students, ensuring fair access for all. We therefore take a stepped approach to resource allocation; seeking the most resource effective solution to your concerns and allocating further resources as and when needed. In order to achieve this, we require that you engage with each step, including that you do your best to engage with any self-help material provided to you.

Where students fail to engage with the service or to keep in contact, we reserve the right to close their case, however we can reactive closed cases should engagement resume.

If a case is closed due to non-engagement on two separate occasions and the student subsequently disengages again after re-engagement, the Advice Service reserves the right to withdraw access to the service.

Send us information when we ask for it

Please send us any documents linked to your case as early as possible. This may include emails, letters, forms, evidence, meeting invitations, university decisions or deadline dates.

We need this information to understand your case and give you accurate advice.

Stay in contact with us

Please respond to our messages and keep us updated. We may send you guidance to read or steps to complete yourself. Please do your best to follow this guidance. We look at each case and decide how we can best support you. We may start with written guidance or initial advice before offering more detailed support where needed. This helps us support students fairly and use the service’s time where it is most needed.

If we do not hear from you, we may close your case. If your case is closed, we may reopen it when you get back in touch. If we close your case more than once because we do not hear from you, and this happens again, we may limit your access to the service.

We also require you to be considerate of others accessing the service; this means being considerate to the confidentiality of others, the right of others to access the service, and the fair allocation of resources by the service.

Be honest with us

We rely on the information you give us. If important information is missing or delayed, we may not be able to advise you properly. It may also affect how quickly we can respond. You can choose what you share with us, but missing information may affect the support we can provide.

Please tell us if you are also getting advice from another organisation, solicitor or legal adviser about the same issue. In some cases, we may not be able to support you at the same time as another adviser. This helps avoid mixed messages or conflicting advice.

If a student deliberately misleads us or withholds important information, we may limit or stop our support.

Treat staff and other students with respect

We expect students using the service to treat our staff with respect.

We may stop supporting students who behave in an abusive, threatening or intimidating way towards staff.

We also ask students to use the service reasonably. This means avoiding:

• - excessive contact
• - repeated requests for updates before we have had time to respond
• - asking us to do things outside our role, capacity or expertise
• - trying to bypass service processes

Please also be considerate of other students using the service. This includes respecting their privacy and their right to access support.

Scope of Service

Our service provides Academic Advice related to the University of Lancashire. At our discretion we may offer additional support in matters pertaining to Compelling Personal Circumstances Claims with Student Finance England. We also remain a hate crime reporting centre.

Who can use the Advice Service

Student Advice is only funded to provide a service to students of University and members of Students’ Union. We cannot advise parents, guardians, family members, or friends of a student, except where that contact has the express written authority of the student. We cannot advise a student’s legal representative, and/or supplement the advice of a third party.

Limitations of service

We are not an emergency service, nor can we provide counselling or mental health support although we understand many cases may have an acute impact on your wellbeing; wherever possible we will refer you to other services

We will not advice beyond our scope of competence. Where we cannot advice on an issue we may refer the student to another source of assistance, either within the Student’s Union, the wider University community, or to local or national services.

Signposting and Referrals

Services we may signpost/refer to include but at not limited to

Advice Service capacity and Delivery

Our Advice Service provides free, independent and confidential advice to students at the University of Lancashire.

We want to be clear about how busy the service is, how quickly we are able to respond, and whether any parts of the service are temporarily reduced or paused.

Demand for advice changes throughout the year. There may also be times when our capacity is reduced because of staff leave, training, university closure days, or a high number of student cases.

This page helps you understand what to expect before you contact us.

Service Levels

🟢 Green

We are responding to advice enquiries within our usual service standard of 5 working days.

🟠 Amber

We are receiving more cases than usual. This means it may take us longer than 5 working days to respond. We will still prioritise urgent cases.

🔴 Red

We are receiving a significantly high number of cases. Response times are likely to be longer. We will prioritise urgent cases first.

How service levels may impact our delivery

Sometimes we may need to reduce or pause parts of the service for a short time.

This may happen because of high demand, staff absence, university closure periods, training, or planned service development work.

If this happens, we will explain which parts of the service are affected, why the change is happening, how long we expect it to last, and where else you can get support, where this is available.

This could include extending response times, prioritising high-risk or time-sensitive cases, pausing new advice enquiries for a short time, or providing written advice only for lower-level issues.

We will always notify University Services of any pauses and severe delays to the service.

We will update the main Advice page when there are temporary changes to the service.