My question for this, in a few parts, is:
a) Is there any way that I can tell Student Finance that I get nothing from my parents? Like by proving they give me nothing (due to debt repayments, etc. from a business we once had that drained their finances), I pretty much feed myself back at home, etc.?
b) Is there any way that I can get extra funding, etc. as they give me nothing? I know I will hear the words 'man up', 'make your own way in life', etc. but it's not as if my parents' incomes makes me eligible for the top amount of grant, etc.
c) Has anybody else had any experience of anything like my scenario (below)?
So, earlier today my parents said to me that I should fill out my Student Finance form as an independent. I told them that, as I keep contact with them and visit home from time to time (although everything I have, do and consume comes from my own funds - Student Finance, wages and some inheritance that my grandfather left for me for uni - although I get very little of that, £5-10/week).
They say that friends of their have kids who 'have done it from first year' and have had no problems (yeah, right, of course mother!) Although I know this to be untrue. However, as they live in single parent families with parents working 20-30hours a week on min wage, they get way more and, thus rely little on their parents (meaning that they have less of a gap in finances if they don't get anything from them).
Anyway, they are telling me to barefaced lie to SFE and say that, the month I spent not in uni accommodation, I bunked on friends' couches, etc. - just they don't understand that, by having had them listed as parents on SFE for the last three years and having not paid rent elsewhere beforehand (as well as having their house as my postal address), that there is no way that I can be classed as independent.