Working as a Sabbatical Officer

International students are encouraged to stand for election as a Sabbatical Officer and students with a Tier 4/Student visa are permitted to take a position as a Sabbatical Officer in the Leeds University Union.

The University of Leeds can sponsor you under Tier 4/Student visa during your year working as a Sabbatical Officer. If you are re-elected to the post for second year, we can continue our sponsorship following this.

If you are elected as a Sabbatical Officer you can then request a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) to enable you to make your Tier 4/Student visa application to cover the period of time you will be working in the role. Please see the details for requesting a CAS on our web page.

If you are re-elected to the role for a second year, you should then request a further CAS in line with the above procedures.

You can work full time as a Sabbatical Officer with a Tier 4/Student visa and you can also undertake additional work on a part-time basis up to a maximum of 20 hours per week.

You can work as a Sabbatical Officer before you have completed your course of study, however this does need to be agreed by your academic school in advance and we advise you to speak to your personal tutor about this in the first instance.

If you do intend to work as a Sabbatical Officer in between your studies we also advise you to discuss the implications for your visa with an Adviser by emailing StudentVisaAdvice@leeds.ac.uk.

Working as a Sabbatical Officer is exempt from the Tier 4/Student visa time limits, therefore any work undertaken in this role will not be counted towards the overall period that you are permitted to remain in the UK as a Student.

If you have completed your programme of study and your visa will expire before the elections, you will not be able to make an application to extend your visa to stay in the UK for the elections. This will mean that you need to leave the UK during the election period and as it is likely to affect your campaign please consider this carefully before entering a campaign.