Receipt of your appeal will normally be acknowledged within 5 working days.  Relevant information will then be gathered.  This may include your marks record, any Mitigating Evidence Committee records and Examination Board minutes.  The advice of officers with relevant expertise, or holding a relevant position of formal authority, may also be sought - for example, in a case involving mitigating circumstances the relevant Director of Student Experience will often be asked for their view and/or in a case involving a matter of academic judgment the relevant Examination Board Chair may be asked for their view.

You may also be asked for clarification of statements in your appeal or for further evidence.  Please bear in mind, however, that it is your responsibility to ensure that you have provided full information and supporting evidence to substantiate your grounds for appeal.  Please also be careful to ensure that we can contact you quickly about your appeal, by keeping us informed of any changes in your contact details.

Once the relevant information has been gathered together and advice sought, a decision will be taken as to whether the appeal is admissible.  A decision on whether or not an appeal is admissible will be made by the Chair of the Appeals Board, on the basis of the evidence available and advice from relevant officers.  It may be, for example, that the grounds of appeal are that there were circumstances of which the examiners were unaware, but on investigation, it is evident that those circumstances had been considered by the Examination Board.  Another example might be that the grounds for appeal are procedural error, but there is no evidence that any error has taken place.  If the appeal is considered to be inadmissible, a letter will be sent to you confirming that decision.

Admissible appeals are then considered further to establish whether these can be decided without a hearing of an Appeals Panel.  Please note that in practice very few cases are decided by an Appeals Panel.  In the vast majority of cases, a decision is made by the Chair of the Appeals Board on the basis of the evidence available.  A hearing of an Appeals Panel is reserved for very exceptional cases, which are especially complex or contentious and where an appropriate outcome is not suggested on the basis of the evidence available.   You will be notified in writing if your appeal has been upheld by the Chair of the Appeals Board, or if you will be invited to a hearing of an Appeals Panel.

During peak times when an especially large number of appeals are submitted - at the time of the undergraduate summer and September resit exams - you should normally expect to wait 2-3 months before you hear the outcome of your appeal; outside the peak times, it will in most cases be possible to let you know sooner than this.

Appeals at the time of the September resit exams where you appeal to progress to the next year, or to be offered a repeat year, will be treated as top priority given the urgency of these cases so in most cases of this type you can expect to hear the outcome more quickly, within 4-5 weeks.

Other factors which may result in your case taking longer include where your case is especially complex, where supporting evidence is awaited from you, or where someone who is critical to resolving your case is unavailable.

The normal maximum time to let you know the outcome will be 4 months; in any cases that take more than 3 months to resolve, you will be given an explanation in writing as to the reasons for the delay.