Dear Sir or Madam,
	I am writing to you to issue a complaint, relating to mismanagement by the University of my examination results. Firstly, I wish to clearly define the sequence of events taking place as relevant to this complaint in this calendar year (2011).
	Beginning in the middle of January 2011, I have been afflicted with a digestive problem that resulted in fairly severe illness. The University accepted the Impaired Performance claim for the examinations sat in the following examination period. I then proceeded to re-sit these modules, and some others, in the Special Assessment Period (SAP) 2011.
	The Programme Board sat to determine the results of these re-sits on the 23rd of September 2011 (Friday). On this date, an e-mail was sent to the students, listing myself as a debtor. In addition, as of this date, any attempt to access my results on the University’s online student system (Learn) resulted in a message saying that I was in debt to the University and my results would not be released. This message contained advice suggesting that I call the Student Finance Office at the University.
	On the 24th of September (Saturday) I communicated with Student Finance England about the issue. Their online system showed that the payments had been approved but not paid. The advisor that I contacted told me that the University had not requested the release of the funds.
	Also on this day, after this contact, I e-mailed the Student Finance Office at the University about this issue. I received an automatic response stating that they were very busy, but no response after that. On the immediately following Monday (26th) I attempted to contact the Student Finance Office by telephone. I managed to get through to a person, who took down the details of my problem, but who also stated that the office was very busy and it might be some time before I would get a return contact, which never occurred.
	On the 29th of September (Thursday) I contacted the Student Finance Office again by telephone. They instructed me that the Student Records department was more appropriate for my problem, and transferred my call. I was told there that the correct person to solve my problem would be Mark Lister, who was not in the office at the time. I left a message with the office but never received a return communication. I also attempted to email the Departmental Administrator for the Computer Science department, but he was also unavailable.
	On the 3rd of October (Monday) I realized that no message had been received. I called the Student Records Office again and left another message. Mr Lister received this message on the Monday evening and contacted me on Tuesday morning (4th October). He stated that Student Finance England had recorded me as being on the wrong year of my programme and this is why the funds had not been released. He told me that the paperwork correcting the error may take some time, but as he was assured that the funds would be released and it was merely an administrative error, the debt flag would be cleared from my record so that I could view my examination results. This process would occur overnight.
	On the Wednesday (5th October) I received my results. The entire Part B programme is worth 120 credits. A student on the Master’s course, which is my programme, must achieve 100 credits to progress to Part C for the Bachelor course and 110 credits to progress to Part C for the Master’s course. I achieved only 90 credits. Given that I had an impaired performance claim from the beginning of the year, I had the right to re-sit one module again.
	However, I noticed that there was an anomaly in my results. For one module (worth 20 Credits), I received a 0 for my re-sit result. This is usually only associated with students who did not hand in work to be marked, whereas I knew that I had handed in work. I e-mailed the lecturer for that module, asking him what had occurred. I also e-mailed the Departmental Administrator, stating that there had been a problem.
	On Friday, it was discovered that my re-sit coursework mark had been entered for the wrong student, which is referred to as a transcription error. This student was not taking the module again, and so the mark could not have been valid. When the mark was corrected, then I passed through to the third year of my Master’s course.
	However, since a relatively excessive period of time had passed (two weeks), I had lost the accommodation that I had planned, as I had been unable to commit to it when I might not have been able to financially support it without being on the third year and receiving support from Student Finance England.
My family home is in Dorset, which is 200 miles and four hours or more by car from Loughborough. This makes it logistically infeasible to attend my course remotely. I had no choice but to obtain a train ticket (£60 return, with railcard) and hotel accommodation for the second week of term (£225), with additional food costs. I have spent this time looking for new accommodation in Loughborough, and dealing with the administration of registering for Part C and other administration.
Since then, I have had to obtain another train ticket (£60 return, with railcard) and more hotel accommodation for the third week (£230 plus food) whilst finalizing new accommodation.
I’ve missed a significant stretch of lectures, which may yet have unknown knock-on effects to my performance in my examinations in the coming spring, especially as I have more modules than usual in this semester (7, as opposed to the usual 6) including some for which coursework time has already begun, and incurred significant financial cost, as well as a mental cost in terms of the significant stress of not knowing, and then being told I had failed.
In addition, there’s a physical cost in terms of my original illness. The reason that I made no IP claim during the summer is because the effects are mostly mitigated by eating some specific foods. This, however, is not very feasible whilst living out of a hotel, and as such, my original symptoms have recurred, albeit in a less severe fashion. I allege that these significant costs are the responsibility of the University.
Firstly, I allege that the transcription error should have been caught by the University’s own systems, as the student the mark was entered for was not even sitting that work, and secondly, the mark of zero was entered by the Programme Board, which is human oversight and not automated. Given the nature of the consequences of failing the module, and that the other work was entered on time, I suggest that it’s unfeasible that I simply did not hand in work, and that the University failed to recognize that this was a problem. I suggest that the University should have found this error via both automatic and human means.
Secondly, I allege that the University failed to have sufficient staffing. I suggest that it is quite unreasonable to have only one member of staff who can deal with issues relating to Student Finance England, and doubly so to have that member out of the office with no replacement for several consecutive days during work hours, in a period in which if there were any problems, the consequences would be significant. I suggest this shows very poor foresight by the University.
Thirdly, I allege the lack of communication exhibited by the University is highly unreasonable, as regards to the quantity of unanswered e-mails and missing messages. I accept that the start of the term is a very busy period for the University, as they have many thousands of students, many of whom will have their own issues. However, I suggest that as the start of the term is always a busy period for the University, which should have many years of experience with this problem, they should have measures in place to cope and allow smooth operation.
I suggest that the University should not with-hold the results of students, because this prevents them from making their own arrangements whilst solving the finance problems. If the University had posted my results and simply stated that they would not allow me to progress without the fees, then I could have sorted both the transcription and financial errors concurrently. This would have significantly reduced the scope of the problem.
If I had known my genuine result on the 23rd of September, which I suggest would have been possible if not for the many mistakes made by the University, it is possible that my original accommodation arrangements would have been still available, and no problem would have resulted at all. As such, I suggest that the resulting damage which I have suffered is the responsibility of the University.