Please help urgently

If you apply for 2013/14 entry, the tax year 11/12 is used.

Hello,

I am currently on a gap year having deferred my place to study at the University of Leeds. My mother's income is £33000 and she is a single parent, naturally she has a mortgage to pay and wouldn't be able to offer financial support to me while at university - which is fine. If 'household income' was based on my mother's salary I would be able to borrow enough in maintenance loans and have a large enough maintenance grant to support myself through uni - roughly £7000.

The problem is that on my gap year I am working in politics and earning £20,000, this technically brings my mother's total household income to £53,000 which massively reduces what I am able to borrow and obviates me from receiving a grant. I simply would not be able to afford to live on £4500 for the year, as even accommodation is £4900 and I certainly cannot buy all of my educational books, food and everything else associated with being a student with that amount.

Quite obviously I will not be commuting to London from Leeds daily to earn£20,000 in order for household income to remain at £53,000, it will be £33,000 again when I start university. Seeing as the whole concept of taking household income into consideration is to ascertain if and how much help you need to borrow to survive, I cannot believe I would be prevented from a larger grant purely because I once earned money.

I hope somebody can correctly answer this problem, as nobody I have consulted is able to categorically tell me whether it will be one. Many have said "Just don't bloody tell them" and I probably won't but I want to know whether I'd get away with it and if I'm even 'getting away' with anything anyway. It may be the case that only my mother's income is necessary to declare?

HELP

If your under 25 then student finance automatically look at your parents income and not yours. And I'm curious, what job is this you've got in politics on a gap year? I'm a Politics student and struggled to find anything relevant I could do on mine and I live in London as well.

Also having looked at Leeds uni myself I can tell you they have accomodation thats cheaper than £4,900, especially if you go self catered which is a lot cheaper.

Working for an MP. Thanks for answering, I hope this is true.

wow i didnt realise any of them paid, and certainly not someone without a degree thats impressive.