Applying for help from the NHS Low Income Scheme: guide for students

Your personal allowance covers your day to day living expenses and those of your partner.

The amount of the personal allowance is defined in the law. It includes bills like those for water, fuel, telephone, TV rental and house insurance. We cannot include extra amounts for specific bills like, car or loan repayments. These are already included in your personal allowance.

We cannot include extra amounts for books, equipment or travel costs. These are already included in the necessary outgoings we ignore from your income.

Premiums cover special needs you or your partner might have. For example, you get a premium if you or your partner are disabled or get a component with your New Style Employment and Support Allowance.

We include the actual housing costs that you and your partner are personally liable to pay. These include mortgage repayments and rent not covered by housing benefit or allowances. Housing costs do not include board or other money you pay to another member of your family.

We include rent that you pay while you’re studying away from home. This can be rent paid to your college or university or to a private landlord.

If you apply before the term starts, we cannot include your term-time rent in our assessment. So you might not get help with paying NHS costs. You should not apply until you have returned to your term-time accommodation.

Students are usually exempt from paying Council Tax. But this is not always the case, for example, in some shared households. We include the actual amount of Council Tax that you and your partner are personally liable to pay.

How we calculate your weekly income from your student loan or grant depends on:

• the type and level of your course
• your term dates
• if you’re in your final or only academic year
• which country in the UK funds your loan or grant
• where you live during term time
• where you live when you’re not studying

We’ll assess your application based on the whole amount of student loan available to you. This includes any income related and non-income related parts, and any parental contribution.

We do this if you take out the full amount or minimum amount of student loan available, or do not take out a student loan. If your student loan calculation includes a parental contribution, we must include this in your income – even if you do not get this contribution.

If you do not take out the whole amount of student loan available, we’ll ask for evidence of how you’re paying your bills.

The type and level of your course may attract different types of grants or loans. This can affect how much help you get.

If you’re on a type of course that attracts a student loan (and do not claim it), we assume you get the full loan.

We need to know the dates for each term in the academic year of your course. These dates can affect how much grant or loan you are eligible for and how much rent we can count.

When calculating your income from student loans or grants, we ignore:

• a standard amount for travel costs, books and equipment
• the tuition element of the loan or grant
• the actual amounts included in your grant for housing costs and other maintenance costs

If you get a loan and a grant, we ignore the standard amount for books and travel costs from one or the other – not from both.

We cannot take other debt repayments into account when we work out your outgoings.

We also assess any other money you have coming in. This includes:

• earnings - after taking off tax, National Insurance contributions and half of any pension contributions
• social security benefits and state pensions
• work, private or superannuation pensions
• War Disablement Pension or War Widow’s Pension
• money from trust funds
• any other income you or your partner get

Savings and investments include any cash you have, or money you hold in any type of bank or savings account. This includes:

• Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs)
• Lifetime ISAs (LISAs)
• money in trusts
• money held in your name for someone else
• cryptoassets
• Premium Bonds
• stocks and shares
• accounts held in other countries
• any property that you’re not living in (like a second home)
• any property you own in another country

If you apply before the start of term and you have a grant for tuition fees, we must also count this as savings. We must also assess a standard amount of income that comes from those savings.

We cannot take your other debts into account when we work out your money, savings and investments.