Plan a UK Study Budget With an AI Checklist: Verify the £1,529 London Maintenance Rule, £776 IHS and Your Course Fee

TL;DR

A UK study budget works when every line traces back to an official figure rather than a round estimate. For a Student visa, the money you must prove splits into two parts: course fees for one academic year (up to nine months), with the amount shown on your Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies, and maintenance at £1,529 per month for up to nine months if your course is in London, or £1,171 per month for up to nine months if it is outside London. London means the City of London and the 32 London boroughs. On top of that sit two fixed charges: £558 to apply for a Student visa from outside the UK, and the Immigration Health Surcharge at £776 per year for students. An AI checklist earns its keep by forcing you to name each line, tag it with the institution and page it came from, and then send it back for verification before you commit.

The five cost lines a UK study budget has to carry

• Course fees for one academic year (up to nine months), with the amount you need to pay shown on your Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies.
• Maintenance, meaning living costs: £1,529 per month for up to nine months for courses in London, or £1,171 per month for up to nine months for courses outside London. If you are boarding at a residential independent school, you pay boarding fees instead, and that amount is on your CAS.
• The Student visa application fee: £558 to apply from outside the UK.
• The Immigration Health Surcharge: £776 per year for students, their dependants and those on a Youth Mobility Scheme visa, given as £1,552 for a two-year visa.
• Institutional and one-off costs: a deposit to secure your place if you are an international fee-payer, and an accommodation figure of £250.00 for 2025/26 in the Bishop Burton policy.

Anything your own university does not publish a figure for should stay blank in the first draft of the checklist. A budget with an empty row is honest; a budget with a guessed row is the one that breaks later, because the visa decision and the enrolment deadline both work off real numbers.

Where the money rules bite: maintenance, the 28-day window and acceptable evidence

The monthly maintenance figure is only half the story. You must have the money for at least 28 days in a row, and the end date of the 28-day period must be within 31 days of the date you apply. GOV.UK's own illustration is worth memorising: if you submit your application on 1 January, you would have to show that the funds were in your bank account for at least the 28-day period ending on 1 December.

What counts as evidence is stricter than most applicants expect. The funds must be held in a personal bank account; you cannot show funds in a business bank account. If you submit evidence from more than one account, the combined total of all your accounts during the 28-day period before your closing balance is considered, and the closing balance relied on must be within 31 days of the date you submit your application. A loan letter works as evidence of funds where the loan is provided by a government, by a government-sponsored student loan company, or as part of an academic or educational loan scheme. If an official financial sponsor is paying for some or all of your tuition fees or living costs, you can deduct what they are paying from the amount you need to show, and the sponsorship may be detailed in your CAS statement or in a letter from the sponsor.

There are also cases where you do not need to prove the financial requirement at all: if you have been living in the UK with a visa for at least 12 months prior to the date of your Student visa application, or if you are applying as a student union sabbatical officer. Applicants from a country listed under the differential evidence requirement are also exempt, although they may still be asked to provide the evidence before a decision is made. Queen Mary's guidance adds two cautions: the 12-month route only counts if you are making the application inside the UK, and the university still expects you to have made adequate provision for tuition fees and living costs even where evidence is not required. That caution has a reason behind it — financial evidence that does not meet the requirements of the UKVI immigration rules is described as a common reason for visa refusals.

Tuition: the course fee page and the CAS are the only two numbers that matter

Tuition is where a checklist helps most, because there is no national number to look up. Bishop Burton's HE Tuition Fee Policy for 2025/2026 states that the actual fee charged for each course is determined by the College's senior leadership and reviewed once a year, and that once fees are confirmed each year they are published on the University Centre Fees and Finance page. It also warns that in subsequent years a tuition fee may be subject to an inflationary increase — precisely the line a single-year budget leaves out.

Two examples from the material supplied show how wide the spread is. Overseas higher education students at Bishop Burton are charged £12,782 for 2025/26, while University of Staffordshire's international page lists annual tuition fees for 2025/26 entry at £16,750 per year and £19,000 per year. Your fee status is itself a decision point: it is determined to be either "Home" or "Overseas", and if you think your status is incorrect you can query it.

Timing matters as much as amount. Staffordshire states that international students need to show proof of funds before a CAS can be issued, that payment instalments cannot usually be changed, that tuition fees cannot be paid in cash, and that you should arrange your first instalment before travelling because you will not be able to open a bank account until you enrol. Bishop Burton states it will not be able to issue a CAS until it has received your tuition fee payment, and sets 1 August 2025 as the deadline for payment of all Overseas student tuition fees in full. A placement fee for a year spent in industry on a four-year sandwich course also appears on the Staffordshire page.

Two offsets belong on the same sheet. Bishop Burton offers alumni a £1,500 fee discount when progressing to study a master's programme, applied to the year one fee for full-time students, and Staffordshire says it offers a range of scholarships and discounts for international students. What your fee covers also varies by institution: Staffordshire includes International Welcome Week activities, a free bedding pack with duvet and sheets if you are going into its accommodation, an email account, and use of IT and library facilities.

The IHS and the visa fee: fixed charges where the calculation trips people up

The headline rate is simple. The surcharge is £776 per year for students, their dependants and those on a Youth Mobility Scheme visa, given as £1,552 for a two-year visa. The same £776 per year applies to applicants under 18 at the time of application, while £1,035 per year applies to all other visa and immigration applications, given as £3,105 for a three-year visa. For part of a year, you do not need to pay the surcharge if you are applying from outside the UK for six months or less; £517.50 applies to any other application; and for more than six months but less than one year you pay the cost of a full year wherever you apply from. If you do not pay the surcharge or do not pay enough, UK Visas and Immigration emails the address given in your application to explain how to pay.

The harder part is that a visa often lasts longer than the course. Westminster's guidance gives a worked case: a student on a three-year undergraduate degree pays £776 IHS for each year of the course plus £388 for the additional time before and after it, a total of £2,716. For a Master's programme it gives a total of between £1,164 and £1,552 depending on visa length, because the visa includes up to one month before the course starts and an additional four months after it ends; where that makes the visa slightly longer than 18 months, the payment would be 2 x £776. Westminster also notes that all students applying for entry clearance for more than six months must pay the IHS, that an extension applied for from inside the UK requires payment for any length of visa even if the course is under six months, and that some EU and Swiss students can claim an IHS reimbursement. An overpayment is refunded automatically to the account or card the payment was made from, and should be processed within six weeks of a decision.

Two traps are worth putting on the checklist. First, if the application form calculates an IHS figure you did not expect, check the course length details you entered in the form before assuming the rate is wrong. Second, for a student returning to complete part of a course with less than six months remaining, the calculator commonly produces a figure lower than what should be paid, which can result in a visa shorter than it should be.

Costs applicants forget, deposits, and what you can net off

• Deposit to secure your place: required if you are an international fee-payer, and Staffordshire describes it as your commitment to study there and usually non-refundable. No amount is given in the material supplied, so it belongs on your checklist as a blank row to fill from your own offer letter.
• Accommodation: Bishop Burton's policy references £250.00 for 2025/26.
• IHS overpayment and duplicate payment: an overpayment is refunded automatically, and if you apply inside the UK and pay the surcharge twice for the same period you should receive a partial refund.
• Sponsorship and scholarships: whatever an official financial sponsor is paying can be deducted from the amount you need to show, and scholarships and discounts are listed by individual universities.
• Instalment rigidity: payment instalments cannot usually be changed, which is a planning constraint rather than a cost.

Turn the budget into a repeatable AI checklist, then verify every row

A useful prompt does three things: it names the line item, it asks which institution and page the figure comes from, and it asks what is still missing. A pattern you can reuse in the site's AI chat:

"Build me a one-year UK study budget for COURSE NAME at UNIVERSITY NAME, starting MONTH YEAR. For each row give me: the amount, whether it is annual or one-off, the institution and page it comes from, and what is still unconfirmed. Flag any row where you do not have an official figure instead of estimating it."

Then run a second pass: "For each row, tell me whether it is a visa requirement or a university cost, and which official page I should re-check it on before I commit."

The point of the second pass is the verification loop. GOV.UK's Student visa money page is the reference for maintenance, the London definition and the 28-day rule; its Student visa overview covers the £558 application fee and the rule that the earliest you can apply is six months before your course starts; and its healthcare surcharge page carries the IHS rates. Tuition, deposit, instalment and refund rules only ever come from your own university's fees and finance pages. The AI chat is good at holding the structure and at showing you which rows are still empty; it should never be the last word on a number.

Reader questions on UK study budgets

How much money do I need to show, and what changes if I study in London?

You need enough for your course fees for one academic year (up to nine months), with that amount on your CAS, plus maintenance at £1,529 per month for up to nine months in London or £1,171 per month for up to nine months outside London. London means the City of London and the 32 London boroughs.

How much are the visa fee and the health surcharge?

£558 to apply for a Student visa from outside the UK. The Immigration Health Surcharge is £776 per year for students, given as £1,552 for a two-year visa; Master's students are quoted a total between £1,164 and £1,552 depending on visa length.

Where do I find my exact tuition fee, and does it change between years?

On your university's own fees page — Bishop Burton publishes fees on its Fees and Finance page and reviews them once a year. The same policy states that in subsequent years a tuition fee may be subject to an inflationary increase, and that your fee status is assessed as either Home or Overseas.

What evidence do I need, and can I use more than one account or a loan?

Hold the funds for at least 28 consecutive days, with the end of that period within 31 days of your application date. Funds must be in a personal bank account, not a business account. Multiple accounts can be combined across the 28-day period before the chosen closing balance. A loan letter is acceptable where the loan comes from a government, a government-sponsored student loan company, or an academic or educational loan scheme.

How many hours can I work part-time on a Student visa?

Is my deposit refundable if my visa is refused?

Staffordshire describes the deposit as your commitment to study there and usually non-refundable, and the material supplied gives no visa-refusal exception. What is refundable is different: an IHS overpayment is refunded automatically to the account or card used, within six weeks of a decision.

How these figures were sourced

The Queen Mary, Westminster, Bishop Burton and Staffordshire documents carry no publication date in the material supplied. Because visa fees, surcharge rates and maintenance amounts are revised over time, treat every figure here as a starting point for your own checklist and re-check it on GOV.UK and your university's fees page before you rely on it. StudyGB publishes independent information on UK university applications and student life.