3. Miss G complains SLA inappropriately recorded her as having medical conditions she did not have which delayed her application for DSA in September 2020. She also complains the IA found this was human error, rather than staff making clinical judgements.
4. Miss G says this caused her distress. As an outcome, she is looking for service improvements.
5. DSA is available for disabled students to contribute to the additional costs incurred during their studies because of their disability. SLC gives DSA in line with government regulations and is responsible for the management of public funds.
6. On 21 September 2020, Miss G applied for DSA support for the 2020-21 academic year.
7. The medical conditions she included to qualify for the funding were vertebrobasilar migraine and chronic migraine (a condition where you have frequent or long-lasting headaches or migraines). The evidence in support of Miss G’s disability application included a clinic letter from a neurologist from the month before. The letter included her previous medical history.
8. In October 2020, SLC asked for further evidence to support Miss G’s application, however, it asked about her previous medical history (mild anxiety, episodic bilateral hearing loss [permanent hearing loss that affects both ears] and asthma).
9. SLC awarded DSA to Miss G on 27 October 2020.
10. Miss G complained SLC asked her to provide medical evidence in support of conditions she had not applied for DSA for. Unhappy with SLC’s response, she escalated her complaint to the IA.
11. The IA found that SLC staff should not have asked Miss G to provide evidence for the medical conditions listed in the neurologist’s letter. It found this was down to human error. It also noted SLC had already confirmed Miss G’s application based on migraine should have been accepted as the evidence she gave was recent. It said SLC removed the old conditions, but mistakenly removed the migraine conditions as well. This was a mistake. It noted that SLC offered Miss G £50 to compensate for this poor service.
12. Miss G disagrees with the IA’s finding about the request for additional evidence. She remains firmly of the view that SLC acted as ‘medical assessors’ by asking her for this. She believes it should not have done this because its staff are not medically trained.
16. In cases such as this, where a second-tier complaint handler such as the IA has reviewed the complaint, we often start by looking at whether it has carried out its investigation properly. We look to see if it made fair and reasonable decisions and provided clear explanations. We do this because we see no need to reinvestigate a complaint that has already been investigated thoroughly and fairly.
17. Miss G is unhappy with the IA because it did not share the same view as her, which is that SLC staff took on the role of medical assessors by asking her to provide further medical evidence, even though they are not clinically trained. She told us she is not happy the IA could not account for why DSA staff assumed her previous medical conditions were current conditions and asked her to provide evidence to account for the conditions.
18. In line with our Principles, the IA should have considered what Miss G had to say and weighed up the evidence appropriately. It should also have given her evidence-based explanations and reasons for its decision.
19. The IA considered Miss G’s account of what happened, the complaint responses and SLC’s notes.
20. The IA referred to SLC’s guidance on DSA support for students’ eligibility. It noted that the guidance says medical evidence in support of an application should state the nature of the disability and explain how it impacts the student. The IA noted that SLC had queried the medical evidence Miss G had supplied even though it had already agreed this evidence should have been accepted.
21. Miss G told us the IA has not been able to tell her why SLC attributed her with medical conditions she did not have. However, the IA noted in its report that the evidence she gave SLC was either not understood or misread. In other words, it considered this was a human error. So we cannot agree the IA did not give Miss G a reason – rather, it gave her a reason she disagreed with.
22. Miss G disagrees with the IA’s account that it was an error. She says this is false and DSA staff should not have medically assessed her medical letter as they are not trained to do so.
23. The IA looked at this in its report. It explained that only Miss G refers to the staff as ‘medical assessors’, but this is not what they are. We agree with the IA on this point. We note that Miss G disagrees, but we have seen nothing to suggest that anything other than simple human error resulted in the request for further evidence. The IA has provided evidence-based explanations surrounding this. We are sorry Miss G disagrees so strongly.
24. In summary, we consider that the IA investigated this matter in line with our Principles. For this reason, we have decided not to further consider her concerns about the SLC.
1. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Miss G’s complaint about Student Loans Company (SLC). We have decided not to take any further action. This is because we consider the Independent Assessor (IA) has carried out a thorough, balanced and evidence-based investigation.
2. We appreciate Miss G was distressed at the delay in her application for disabled student allowance (DSA) and frustrated SLC asked her to provide further information. That said, we consider the IA has explained the reasons why SLC staff did this - it seems this was a mistake. We recognise Miss G disagrees with the IA but this is not, in itself, enough to persuade us something went wrong.