UK Student Visa Funds: The 28-Day Rule, Exactly

Most people who fail the UK maintenance test had the money. They just could not prove it had been sitting still for 28 consecutive days ending on the right date, and that is the whole test. A caseworker is not assessing whether you can afford to study. They are checking arithmetic and dates against Appendix Finance, and a two-day error refuses the application as surely as an empty account.

The amounts, for a one-year master’s: £13,761 in London, £10,539 outside it — maintenance alone, before a penny of tuition. Everything below was checked against gov.uk in July 2026.

The two numbers, and the multiplier

Per gov.uk, maintenance is charged monthly and capped at nine months even if your course runs longer:

Where you study	Per month	Maximum (9 months)
In London	£1,529	£13,761
Outside London	£1,171	£10,539

On top of that you show any outstanding course fees for your first year, as stated on your CAS. Two deductions are allowed. Tuition already paid must be confirmed on the CAS itself or evidenced by a university receipt. And a deposit paid to your student sponsor for accommodation the sponsor arranged can be offset, up to £1,529. A deposit paid to a private landlord or third-party housing company does not count.

“London” is a legal definition, not a vibe

London means the City of London plus the 32 London boroughs. What matters is where you study, not where you live — specifically, whether more than half your course sits inside that area. Live in Luton, study in Camden: London rate. Live in Croydon, study at a Reading campus: the lower one. Caseworkers check the campus postcode. If your university has campuses in both zones, ask the international office in writing which one your CAS will name.

Months round up, not down

Partial months count as whole months. The Student and Child Student caseworker guidance gives the example directly: a course of 6 months and 25 days counts as 7 months. So a 9-month PGDip and a 3-year undergraduate degree both hit the same nine-month ceiling, but a 5-month-and-3-day course counts as 6.

Worked example

MSc, 12 months, University of Manchester. Tuition on the CAS is £18,000; you have already paid a £5,000 deposit, which the university has confirmed on the CAS.

• Maintenance: 9 × £1,171 = £10,539
• Outstanding tuition: £18,000 − £5,000 = £13,000
• Total that must be held for 28 days: £23,539

Counting the 28 days

The rule has two clocks running, and people usually only notice one of them.

Clock one: the money must be held for at least 28 consecutive days. Clock two: the closing balance on your most recent piece of financial evidence must be dated within 31 days before the date you apply. The 28 days is then counted backwards from that closing balance date.

So if your statement’s closing balance is dated 1 September, your qualifying period runs from 5 August to 1 September, and you must submit the application by 2 October at the latest. Miss that window and the statement is dead — you start a fresh 28 days.

The date of application is the date you pay and submit online, not the date of your biometrics appointment. That distinction has killed applications.

One gap in the published rules is worth flagging. They require evidence covering the whole 28-day period at the required level; they never state in terms that the balance must clear the threshold on every individual day. Caseworkers assess it as though they must. So assume a single dip — a transfer out, a school fee debit, a card payment on the wrong account — restarts the clock. Do not treat this money as spendable. Open a separate account if that is what it takes.

Six things every statement must carry

The official financial evidence guidance and the financial requirement caseworker guidance together set out what a document has to carry. Check yours against this before you upload:

• Your name — or your parent’s or partner’s name, if you are using their account under the permitted exceptions
• The account number
• The date of the statement
• The financial institution’s name and logo, or its contact details / branch code
• The balance, and enough of the period to cover all 28 days
• Printed or electronic — never handwritten

Two things contradict what agents in Lagos and Abuja often tell people. Electronic statements do not have to be stamped on every page or backed by a bank letter — the caseworker guidance says so explicitly. And an ATM mini-statement is not acceptable evidence, however neatly printed.

A bank letter works as an alternative, but it must confirm the balance and how long it has been held, rather than listing transactions. Fixed deposit certificates and building society passbooks are also accepted.

Why funds get rejected

Refusals under the financial requirement cluster into a small number of causes, most of them avoidable:

• Overdraft facilities. Appendix Finance FIN 3 excludes them outright. An account showing a £2m limit with a £400,000 balance proves £400,000.
• Money you cannot reach. Pensions, stocks and shares, bonds, and cryptocurrency are all excluded. So are unit trusts and investment accounts. It must be cash you control.
• An institution the Home Office cannot verify. The bank must be regulated by the appropriate national authority and use electronic record keeping. CBN-regulated Nigerian commercial banks are fine. Cooperative societies, esusu/ajo contributions and microfinance outfits without electronic records are not.
• The lump sum that lands on day 20. Large recent credits are not banned, but they reset nothing — the balance must be at the required level throughout, so a mid-period deposit just means the period has not started yet.
• Currency slippage. Foreign-currency balances are converted at the OANDA spot rate on the date of application. With the naira moving the way it does, a balance that clears the threshold today can fall short on submission day. Build in a buffer — 10% is not excessive.

Nigeria is not on the ST 22.1 differential evidence list, which means Nigerian applicants must submit financial documents up front rather than only on request. There is no version of this where you skip the paperwork.

Using your parents’ money

Permitted, and common. The account can be held by a parent or legal guardian, but you need two extra documents: written consent from them confirming you may use the funds, and proof of your relationship — normally your birth certificate showing their names. A joint account works too, as long as you are one of the named holders.

A sponsor who is not a parent or legal guardian — an uncle, an older sibling, a church — does not satisfy this. Their money has to be transferred into a qualifying account and then held for the full 28 days. Separately, if an official financial sponsor has covered your fees or living costs in the last 12 months, you need their written consent to the application. Student loans and official financial sponsorship are the two cases where the 28-day holding period does not apply at all.

CAS, ATAS, and the timing they impose

Your CAS must have been issued no more than 6 months before the date of application. It is not a document you chase after you have your money ready — it is the thing that tells you how much money you need, because the outstanding fee figure comes from it.

ATAS applies to certain postgraduate courses in sensitive science, engineering and technology subjects, identified by CAH3 code. Nigerian nationals are not exempt — the exemption list covers 34 countries including the EU states, the USA, Canada and Japan. The certificate is free, valid 6 months for visa purposes, and takes at least 30 working days — six weeks — with the guidance warning that April to August runs longer. It is the most under-planned deadline in this process.

Nigeria is also on the list of countries requiring a TB test for visas longer than 6 months, at a Home Office-approved clinic. That certificate is valid 6 months from the date of your x-ray.

The 2026 bill

Fees below are the published rates on gov.uk and the healthcare surcharge pages in July 2026. They are reset by statement of changes, usually with weeks of notice, so re-read them the week you apply.

Item	Amount	Notes
Student visa application	£558	Same fee from outside or inside the UK
Immigration Health Surcharge	£776 per year	Student rate; also applies to student dependants and under-18s
IHS, part year of 6 months or less	£388	Half the annual rate
ATAS certificate	Free	Where required
Priority service	£500 (listed)	Optional; availability varies by centre
Super priority service	£1,000 (listed)	Optional; availability varies by centre

The IHS is where budgets break. A 12-month master’s is normally granted the course plus 4 months, so 16 months — on the published rates that is £776 for the full year plus £388 for the part-year, roughly £1,164, payable in one go at application. That is our arithmetic, not a quoted figure; run your exact dates through the official IHS pages. Fees for Nigeria are charged in US dollars via the Home Office fee checker.

If the Graduate route is part of your plan, note the change: 2 years for bachelor’s and master’s graduates applying on or before 31 December 2026, dropping to 18 months from 1 January 2027. PhD holders keep 3 years. The Graduate visa costs £937, and its health surcharge is the standard £1,035 a year, not the student rate.

Backwards from a September start

You can apply from outside the UK up to 6 months before your course starts, and decisions usually come within 3 weeks. Counting back from a late-September start:

1. March–April: accept the offer, pay any deposit, start the CAS process. If your course needs ATAS, apply now — free and slow.
2. May: consolidate funds into one qualifying account. The money stops being touchable here.
3. June: 28-day clock runs. TB test in parallel.
4. Early July: download the statement with a closing balance on day 28. You now have 31 days to submit.
5. Mid-July: submit, pay the IHS, book biometrics.
6. August: decision.

The failure mode is doing this in reverse — CAS in August, ATAS discovered too late, no legal route to a September start.

One number we deliberately left blank

There is no Nigerian refusal rate in this article because we could not source a defensible one. Press figures circulating in 2026 run from roughly 10% to 21% and are not measuring the same thing — some blend study with visitor refusals, some average across twenty years. The authoritative series is Home Office table Vis_D02 in the immigration system statistics data tables. Any percentage quoted without that citation is guesswork wearing a decimal point.

Sources for everything above: the Student visa money page, Appendix Finance, Appendix Student, the caseworker and financial evidence guidance, ATAS, the healthcare surcharge pages, and the Graduate visa page, all read in July 2026. Not legal advice. For a prior refusal, an unusual sponsor, or funds held offshore, use an OISC-registered adviser or your university’s international team.