Independent Student Advice Hub
Student advice that is genuinely independent
A subscribable, shared-service model giving HE providers and students unions access to expert, independent academic advice, without needing to build the infrastructure themselves.
Inside ISAH: Watch our full information session recording
Watch the full session including a live case study from Sophie Harrison at Arden Students Association and Amy’s reflection on a decade in student advice.
Watch the recording →
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What is ISAH?
The gap between offering advice and delivering it well
Most small, specialist and independent providers, and smaller students unions, would say their students have access to independent academic advice. When you look closely at the structure behind that offer, the picture is often more complicated.
ISAH exists to close that gap. We provide a small pool of experienced, specialist advisers who work across our partner organisations, delivering advice that is genuinely independent, properly supervised, and available consistently throughout the academic year.
For many smaller providers and SUs, building and sustaining that infrastructure in-house simply is not viable. ISAH makes it viable, at a cost that reflects that reality.
What we cover
Independent advice across the full range of student casework
Academic Appeals
Guiding students through the appeals process from the first conversation to the final outcome, with honest advice about their options and grounds at each stage.
Academic Misconduct
Independent advice for students facing misconduct or academic integrity allegations, helping them understand the process and navigate it with clarity.
Extenuating Circumstances
Support with extensions, deferrals, and exceptional circumstances claims, including time-sensitive cases where students need fast, clear guidance.
Fitness to Study and Practise
Confidential support for students involved in fitness to study or fitness to practise processes, including those with career and professional registration implications.
Complaints
Impartial guidance through formal complaint processes, with a clear-eyed assessment of what is realistic and what steps are available at each stage.
Housing and Financial Guidance
Practical support for students navigating accommodation challenges and financial difficulties, connecting them to the right resources when they need them.
How it works
A service that fits around your structure, not the other way round
Students contact the service
Through your existing branded channels, web form, email, or referral, with your organisation’s identity front and centre throughout.
Cases are allocated and handled
Our advisers pick up cases quickly during service hours, with shared case notes and clear ownership so nothing falls through the gaps.
You receive regular intelligence
Anonymised thematic reports give your team a clear picture of what students are navigating. The kind of intelligence that internal services often cannot surface.
We grow with you
As ISAH takes on more partners, the service becomes more resilient. Cover, supervision, and specialist depth all improve as the model scales.
Why it matters
The students who need this most are rarely the ones who ask
OIA complaint volumes have risen for ten consecutive years. The 2025 report recorded 4,234 complaints, a 17% rise and the first time the figure has exceeded 4,000. Academic appeals represent 42% of all cases that reach the ombudsman. The students navigating these processes without adequate support rarely show up in satisfaction data. They show up in non-continuation figures instead.
- Genuinely independent advice means the adviser has no employment relationship or reporting line that creates a conflict of interest
- A shared-service model means peer supervision, specialist backup, and continuity that a single in-house adviser cannot replicate
- The regulatory expectation is clear: the OIA Good Practice Framework explicitly supports well-resourced, independent advice
- Independent casework surfaces systemic institutional issues that internal teams are structurally unable to report honestly
- 42% of OIA complainants disclosed a disability and 65% of fitness to practise complaints came from disabled students, highlighting where the advice gap bites hardest
From our casework
What the data shows when independent advice is in place
We are already seeing students asking difficult questions and feeling confident with the answers and level of support they are receiving. Seeing the early impact on how this is changing their confidence, experience, and ability to make the best choices for them whilst studying has been extremely positive.
Arden Students AssociationFor institutions and students unions
What ISAH gives your organisation
Regulatory confidence
Demonstrate to the OIA, OfS, and your own governors that students have access to well-resourced, genuinely independent advice, in language the frameworks will recognise.
Institutional intelligence
Regular anonymised thematic reporting gives your quality and governance teams a view of where processes are generating disproportionate casework, surfaced by a service outside the institutional line.
Cost-effective capacity
Substantially more affordable than recruiting, training, supervising, and sustaining an in-house adviser, and without the single-point-of-failure risk that comes with relying on one person.
Continuity and resilience
Shared case notes, structured handovers, and a pool of advisers mean the service does not collapse when someone is unwell, leaves, or moves on. Your students get consistency regardless.
What partners have said
From the organisations we work with
I contacted Alkhemy as I knew that my team would need some extra support due to staff changes and increases in caseloads. Alkhemy could find me a great adviser who was easy to get along with, hardworking and had a great eye for detail. The quality of advice offered was brilliant.
Students Union PartnerAlkhemy worked alongside our advice service to ensure student queries and issues surrounding housing, financial, wellbeing and academic were responded to within our expected response windows. We appreciate all the work Alkhemy did for us at such a critical time whilst also providing consistent quality throughout.
HE Provider PartnerWe are so grateful that Alkhemy exists and is able to offer our students support. The service gives students somewhere genuinely independent to turn when they are navigating processes that can feel overwhelming.
Partner InstitutionThe early impact on how students are experiencing advice has been really positive. Knowing there is a team behind the service rather than a single person makes a real difference to our confidence in what we can offer students.
Students Association PartnerReady to find out if ISAH is right for your organisation?
We launch in August 2026. We are talking to institutions and students unions now. No pressure, just a conversation about what your students need and whether we can help.
Meet the team
Independent advice is only as good as the people delivering it. Here is who your students will be working with.
A solicitor who discovered the law was not quite what he expected, and spent the next three decades finding better ways to help people who could not help themselves. From CAB to DWP to higher education, Alan has built his career around the moment a student arrives at their lowest point and leaves with the problem resolved.
A social work graduate who turned a passion for advocacy into a career building and running student advice services from the ground up. Rhian’s approach is warm and direct: listen properly, offer options students had not considered, and make sure they feel heard. The advice is always in the student’s corner, not the institution’s.
Meet your Hub Advisers & Advice Service Leads
The people behind ISAH have between them decades of experience supporting students through the moments that can define their time at university. They came to this work from different directions. They stay in it for the same reason.
A disabled student who navigated university life as a wheelchair user and never forgot the people who helped him along the way. From investment banking to campaigns and advocacy to academic advice, Jamie found his calling supporting students through the moments that matter most.
As a student, Amy needed advice and her union did not have a service. After graduating, she was hired to build one. A proper full circle moment. Amy has spent her career making sure students do not go through what she did, leading the ISAH team with warmth, experience, and a no-judgment approach.
A former Welfare Officer who discovered his union’s advice service existed and could not believe he had missed it as a student. He has been making sure others do not miss it ever since. Ollie built an advice service from scratch as a senior manager and founded ISAH to make that model accessible to the whole sector.
Want to be part of the team?
We are always looking for experienced student advisers to join the ISAH associate pool. Flexible, remote, and genuinely rewarding work. Starting from £15 per hour.