Student Finance England Travel Grant for Clinical Placements
If you are a medicine or dentistry student, and you have applied for a Student Finance England (SFE) means-tested maintenance loan, you can apply for a grant from SFE to help with travel costs between your home and the hospital or facility where you’re doing your placement.
Eligibility
To be eligible for the travel grant, you must:
- have applied for a maintenance loan based on your household income (also known as means tested)
- be undertaking a placement as an essential part of your medical or dental course.
Student Finance England (SFE) check your eligibility for the travel grant when they assess your maintenance loan application.
If you have indicated you are undertaking a placement, you will be eligible for the travel grant and they will send you a Clinical Study Travel Expenses (CLEX) form. If you have not received this form, but believe you are eligible, you should contact SFE to request one. The forms are not available to download from their website.
You will not get the SFE travel grant if you’re eligible for means-tested bursaries or awards from the Department of Health (NHS).
How to make a claim
You can submit claims to the travel grant for reimbursement of your expenses as and when you incur them, or all in one go at the end of your placement once you’ve completed it. The deadline for submitting claims is six months from the last day of the academic year.
You will need to submit a CLEX form with every claim, along with your receipts/invoices or other evidence of expenditure, so if you are submitting claims as you incur them you will need to make copies the blank CLEX form or request additional forms from SFE.
You will need to provide a clear breakdown of all placement details on the CLEX form, including addresses, dates and number of journeys being claimed for each placement and, if applicable, public transport tickets/passes. SFE do not reimburse mileage from petrol receipts.
The CLEX form and evidence of expenses such as receipts can be uploaded on to your SFE account or posted as follows.
Submit your claim form and evidence
Get a clear and readable digital copy of your completed form and evidence. You can take a photograph or scan to do this. Your upload must be:
- of the entire document
- readable by SFE
- either a BMP, JPEG, PDF, PNG or TIFF file
- smaller than 16MB.
1. Go to the GOV.UK Student Finance login page. Log in with your student finance login details.
2. Upload your form and click submit. You do not need to sign the form if you're uploading it through your online account.
If you can't upload your form online, you can post it and receipts to: Student Finance England, PO Box 210, Darlington, DL1 9HJ
Keep copies of your receipts if you are sending them by post.
Funding available
The amount you can claim depends on your household income.
You must buy the most cost-effective tickets using the most economical and practical form of transport. We advise that you keep screenshots of your searches so that you can demonstrate to SFE that you booked the cheapest available travel option at the time.
You can’t claim for the first £303 you spend on travel costs, which means that SFE will subtract this amount from the money they reimburse you.
If your household income is more than £39,796, there is an additional £1 subtracted for each additional £8.73 of household income over this threshold, which will reduce the amount you are reimbursed.
Example calculation (illustration only):
- if your household income is £46,000;
- if you want to claim for £2,500;
- the amount you will be reimbursed is £1,486.35.
- The calculation is £2,500 - £303 - £710.65 [£46,000 - £39,796 = £6,204 ÷ £8.73 = £710.65] = £1,486.35.
You don’t need to deduct the £303 or calculate the means-tested deduction. You should claim all your expenses and send receipts for everything to SFE. They will then reimburse you minus any deductions as outlined above.
Terms and conditions
All reimbursements are at the discretion of SFE.
The University can only provide general information based on SFE guidelines and cannot confirm if SFE will accept a particular expense claim or not.
Students are advised to check any travel arrangements with SFE if they are unsure.
The information and figures provided are for guidance only. The actual amount and terms of the Travel Grant will be determined by SFE. The figures quoted here have been obtained from GOV.UK Travel Grant information and you can also get guidance on Travel Grants from Student Finance England.