The financial evidence window has moved
The twenty-eight day rule has not changed. What a caseworker now looks at first has, and it affects applications filed this autumn.
Guidance published this month changes the order in which a student visa file is read. The statement date is now the first thing checked rather than the balance, which sounds procedural and is not.
What it means in practice
A file with exactly the right money and a statement printed five weeks ago is now refused at the first pass. Previously the same file reached a caseworker who might have written back asking for a newer one. That second chance has gone.
Nothing about the amount has changed. Nothing about the twenty-eight consecutive days has changed either. The practical effect is narrower than it sounds and sharper: the order of two steps now decides the outcome.
Hold the money. Wait the twenty-eight days. Print. Then apply, inside the month.
What we have done about it
Every application we have open has been re-read against the new order. Three needed fresh statements and those students were emailed the same afternoon. If you applied through us this season and did not get an email, there was nothing in your file to change.
For anybody applying between now and January, the calendar we work to has moved the statement step two weeks later than it used to sit. It is the same amount of work, done in a different week.