Student Loans Company

4. Mr A complains to us about the actions of the SLC and its decision to remove him from the Repayment of Teacher Loans scheme (RTL) in January 2020. He tells us the SLC removed him from the scheme without his agreement, because it says he failed to tell it about a change of address. He disputes this and says he did tell it at the time. He says the SLC’s decision was unfair and it did not take the right steps to trace and contact him.

5. He tells us the SLC’s actions caused him considerable stress and anxiety.

6. He would like an apology, service changes and financial compensation.

7. The RTL scheme ran as a pilot between 2002 and 2005 and was open to individuals training to teach in specific subjects like biology and chemistry. Applicants who chose to teach one of the eligible subjects would go on to teach in state schools and, for doing so, their student loans would be written off after a ten-year period. For the loans to be written off after the ten-year period, applicants would need to stay in eligible employment, without exceeding the permitted number of breaks.

8. Mr A applied for the RTL scheme in 2003 and was accepted on 24 December 2003. Mr A received funding for the academic years 1998/99 to 2000/01 and 2001/02 to 2002/03. He was enrolled on the scheme from 7 July 2003. Mr A’s loan term was scheduled to end on 6 July 2013. But he was removed from the RTL scheme on 1 May 2009.

9. He contacted the SLC in January 2020 stating he would like to appeal the SLC’s decision to remove him from the RTL scheme in 2008 to 2009. Mr A said he had not taken breaks from teaching and had been teaching science for ten years, as per the RTL scheme requirement.

10. The SLC gave its Stage 1 complaints response from Officer B on 17 March 2020 explaining the RTL scheme. Officer B explained that the RTL scheme included an obligation for applicants to tell the SLC about any changes of circumstances. This means each applicant has to fill in and return a Change of Circumstances Form (CoCF) within a month of any changes. Officer B said an approved verifier (someone who can check) at the new school had to confirm the move.

11. Officer B explained that in October 2009 Mr A’s old school told the SLC he had left his job in April 2008. The SLC sent a CoCF on 18 November 2009 and Mr A was placed on a break from the RTL scheme from 1 May 2008 to 1 May 2009. As the SLC did not get a response, it wrote to Mr A on 15 April 2010 explaining he had been removed from the RTL scheme and there was an outstanding loan balance which he would need to pay.

12. There was no action, either by Mr A or the SLC, until 2020 when Mr A became aware of his removal after getting a notification from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) after he sent his tax return.

13. Officer B also explained that repayments from Mr A’s salary had recently started. The SLC noted that there had been a delay to the notification about the start of repayments from Mr A’s salary. Officer B confirmed that interest would not be charged from 14 April 2010 to 7 November 2018, when the start notification was issued.

14. Mr A replied to the SLC on 19 March 2020 and said he had been employed as a teacher up to that date and said his ‘only breach is the perceived lack of address update’. He said his email address was the same and there was no record of the SLC attempting to contact him by email. Mr A said he thought it was unreasonable for the SLC to remove him from the RTL scheme without making every attempt to contact him.

15. Officer B responded on 4 May 2020 and said Mr A had not responded to its CoCF in November 2009 or told the SLC about his change in employment in 2008. Officer B said the terms and conditions of the scheme require individuals to keep their personal details up to date and this is a requirement put on the individual, not the SLC.

16. Officer B said the SLC had listened to the call made by Mr A on 28 January 2020 and decided that Mr A had not received an appropriate level of customer service. It awarded a £25 ex-gratia payment in recognition of this poor service. The SLC gave feedback to the relevant management teams and asked them to consider future training needs. It said that poor service was not linked to the key issue Mr A had raised about his removal from the scheme.

17. Mr A replied on the same day (4 May 2020) and said the reason he had not responded to letters from the SLC was because he had moved house and had not updated his address. He accepted he should have updated his address and said, ‘I appreciate that this is something I should have done’.

18. He said he had made a payment through self-assessment for the recent tax year as a goodwill gesture. He said he would not make any further payments until the dispute had been resolved. He repeated his concerns that the SLC had not used another method of communication (for example, his email address) in its attempts to contact him. He also asked about others in the RTL scheme and how many had been removed, as well as for copies of his correspondence with the SLC and call recordings.

19. Officer B acknowledged Mr A’s correspondence on 18 May 2020 and said the SLC would provide the documents requested but there were delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and contact being by post. In response to his previous comments, the SLC repeated that he was obliged to repay his student loan and it said it would not agree to any type of mediation.

20. Mr A responded on 1 June 2020 and asked if his correspondence with the SLC was being treated as a complaint or an appeal. He said he wanted it to be treated as an appeal. Mr A said he had remembered a phone call with the SLC to tell it he had changed address. Mr A asked if a copy of this call recording existed. He also said he disagreed with the SLC’s consideration of his concerns and said it was not being dealt with fairly or impartially.

21. Officer B responded on 9 June 2020 confirming the matter was being dealt with as a complaint and was at Stage 1 of the SLC’s complaints process. After his last correspondence, the SLC confirmed that Mr A had been accepted on the RTL scheme on 24 December 2003 and the records showed he contacted the SLC’s customer service line on 9 January 2004.

22. The written notes of the call show that his contact details were not updated, nor did the notes give any sign that contact details or personal information was a topic of conversation. Instead, the notes show that Mr A and the customer service adviser discussed the RTL scheme’s write off process. The records show that the next call was 24 January 2020, after Mr A became aware of his removal from the RTL scheme.

23. The SLC explained it no longer had a copy of the January 2004 call recording due to the time that had passed, in keeping with data protection regulations. Officer B also confirmed the SLC’s contractual position on repayments of the loan, after Mr A’s previous comments about stopping his repayments.

24. Mr A sent a further response on 9 July 2020 and asked for the complaint to be escalated to Stage 2 of the SLC’s complaints process. He asked for further detail of the events of October 2009.

25. In response to Mr A’s comments the Head of Repayments provided a Stage 2 response on 30 July 2020. They repeated the position set out at Stage 1 and said the SLC had provided Mr A with all the relevant information about what had happened. They also repeated the ex-gratia payment offer for the unrelated service issues.

26. Mr A sent another response the next day on 31 July 2020 and said he was unhappy with the SLC’s consideration of his complaint and said he had been ‘fobbed off’. Mr A gave a number of points that he wanted to be addressed. He said he wanted his complaint to be ‘escalated to an independent assessor’. He also repeated his previous comments saying he would not be making any further payments to the SLC.

27. On 6 August 2020 a senior customer relations officer replied to Mr A and confirmed the Department for Education’s (DfE) contact details, as this is the government department with oversight of the SLC. These had been given to Mr A in May, and the SLC gave them again and included an online link.

28. Mr A sent another response on 14 August 2020 and, as before, he said he believed his complaint had not been dealt with impartially. He said the information he got after making a Subject Access Request (SAR) had not answered his questions about the 2009 investigation. He also asked about a tracing request to HMRC and why the SLC had been unable to locate him.

29. The correspondence also said he thought he had told the SLC about his change of address on or around 17 November 2009. In support of this he said a letter from the SLC dated 18 November 2009 included a comment which said, ‘In response to your recent enquiry regarding change in circumstances’. Mr A says this comment supported his argument that he had told the SLC about the change in his circumstances.

30. Mr A said he had reviewed the SLC’s terms and conditions, and it did not state that he had to tell the SLC of a change in circumstances using a specific form or in writing. Mr A also said he thought there was a conflict of interest with the two people who had responded to his complaint because one of the two had been a signatory to the 2009 letter. Mr A said this showed the investigation of his complaint should have been dealt with by a different manager.

31. After the conclusion of his complaint by the SLC at local level, Mr A’s complaint was passed on to the Independent Assessor (IA). The IA provided its response on 11 May 2021 and did not make the findings and recommendations Mr A wanted. Mr A’s MP signed his complaint form to us on 15 March 2022. He brought his complaint to us on 12 September.

34. Based on the information we have seen, there does not seem to be any disagreement on the main facts of the complaint.

35. Mr A agrees he was admitted to the RTL scheme on 7 July 2003 and that he knew he would have to stay as a teacher for a ten-year period for any benefits under the scheme to be valid.

36. The main issue is the SLC’s decision to remove him from the RTL scheme in 2009. Mr A says he met the RTL scheme’s requirements by telling it about his change of address and staying as a teacher for over ten years (18 in total).

37. Firstly, Mr A says he did tell the SLC about his change of address in 2004, something he remembered after submitting his original complaint to the SLC in January 2020. He says his phone call with the SLC on 9 January 2004 included a conversation about his change of address. He says that as he moved around at that time, it makes sense that he would have told the SLC. Mr A the SLC failed to act on the information he provided.

38. The SLC and IA explained in their responses to Mr A that the call recording is no longer available due to the time that has passed. This is not surprising as a lot of time has passed and the SLC has rules on data protection. Without the recording, it means the SLC, the IA, and ourselves must consider what we think most likely happened.

39. Although there is no call recording, the SLC records system does include a note from the call handler at the time. This says ‘itc borr – adv re RTL write off procedure’ and seems to be the only piece of supporting evidence available.

40. The records show that Mr A called the SLC, as ‘itc’ stands for ‘incoming telephone call’, and the subject of the call, according to the call handler, was advice regarding the RTL write off procedure (‘adv’ stands for advice, ‘re’ stands for regarding).

41. Based on the records available to us, Mr A called the SLC on 9 January 2004 to discuss the RTL scheme and the write off process for the scheme. Mr A says this was not the only topic of discussion, he said he also discussed his change of address. The IA decided it was not likely that a change of address was mentioned, as it would have been documented.

42. Without a call recording it is difficult for us to decide exactly what was discussed. It also means it is more difficult to decide if the SLC call handler failed to record everything that was discussed during the call.

43. There is no evidence to show that the call handler failed to record any change of address, and there is no evidence to show Mr A did discuss his change of address during the call.

44. We think it is unlikely that the change of address was discussed. A call clearly did take place at that time, and we cannot see any reason why the call handler would document one part of the conversation and not the other, especially as a change of address is important information.

45. We will now turn to the SLC’s actions in removing Mr A from the RTL scheme.

46. The background section above explains how the process to remove Mr A from the RTL scheme came about in October 2009, when his last school told the SLC Mr A had left their employment. Mr A left the school in April 2008, eighteen months before the school told the SLC.

47. The SLC wrote to Mr A about the change in his circumstances after hearing from the school. At this point the SLC was potentially only aware of the change in his employment and not the change in his address. As the address on the SLC’s system for Mr A was incorrect, he did not get the letter. This point is not disputed by either party.

48. When the SLC followed this up by writing to Mr A again in April 2010, it was to tell him he had been removed from the scheme because he had not replied to its letters. As noted above, Mr A had moved from that address and the letters went unanswered.

49. Mr A pointed to the SLC’s letter of 18 November 2009 as evidence that he had contacted it to give relevant information, mainly because the letter included a CoCF form. Mr A told the SLC and IA that this form being sent suggests he must have requested it at some point.

50. The SLC’s records do not show any calls from Mr A around the time the form was sent out in November 2009. The last recorded call on its system was in January 2004. When Mr A raised these thoughts with the SLC he was unable to give any explanation about when or how he would have made a request for a CoCF in 2009.

51. As noted in the IA report according to information Mr A provided in 2020, he changed address at some time around January 2004 and his next contact with the SLC was in January 2020. So, if Mr A had raised his change of address during the January 2004 call, the CoCF would not have been sent to him in November 2009, nearly five and a half years later. It seems very unlikely the form was related to that change in circumstances or sent because of anything discussed during that call.

52. During its investigation the IA asked the SLC about the 18 November 2009 letter. The SLC said the letter looked like a standard letter and explained it was likely the letter had been sent out after the Annual Review form from Mr A’s former school in October 2009. This fits with the other evidence available, particularly as there is no record of Mr A contacting the SLC in 2009 and he has been unable to confirm if he did or did not contact the SLC at all that year.

53. We think it is most likely that the November 2009 letter was a standard letter rather than a response to any communication from Mr A. We recognise Mr A’s recollection that he contacted the SLC in 2009. We must also recognise there is no evidence to support any contact was made at that time.

54. From what we have seen, there were two major changes: the change in Mr A’s postal address (which Mr A says he told the SLC about in January 2004 but cannot be confirmed based on the evidence available) and his change of schools in April 2008 (which Mr A did not tell the SLC about, although we understand he does not dispute this).

55. In its responses to Mr A, the SLC says Mr A had responsibility to tell it about any changes in his circumstances. Mr A questioned this during his complaint to the SLC, and it explained Section E of the RTL application form that says, ‘I shall inform the Student Loans Company immediately of cany change in my employment or personal details’. Mr A signed and completed this declaration.

56. Taking the timeline of events into account, we have not seen any records that Mr A told the SLC about his change in employment in April 2008.

57. The RTL application form goes on to say in paragraph seven part one:

‘Changes of circumstances during the academic year.

If you change your employment circumstances during the academic year (i.e. at anytime other than 1 September) you are legally obliged to notify SLC immediately so that any appropriate adjustments can be made to your account. You will be asked to complete a change of circumstances.’

58. Mr A changed employment in April 2008 and he did not tell the SLC about this change. The SLC did not know about the change in his employment until October 2009, when the school advised it. The SLC’s records show that there was no contact with Mr A from January 2004 until January 2020. We can see that changing his employer falls within one of the categories that Mr A needed to tell the SLC about.

59. In addition to the terms and conditions of the RTL scheme, the SLC and Mr A must consider the regulations which govern the RTL scheme. Regulation 9 of the Education (Teacher Student Loans) (Repayment etc) Regulations 2003 clearly outlines the legal obligations that any applicant to the RTL scheme is legally required to keep to.

60. Regulation 9 (1) states that:

‘9.—(1) Every applicant and every eligible teacher shall forthwith inform the Secretary of State if the following occurs, and provide him with particulars— (a)he ceases to be in eligible employment; (b)he changes eligible employment; (c)he enters into a new contract with his existing employer; (d)he recommences eligible employment and regulation 6 applies; (e)he changes from part-time to full-time employment or from full-time employment to part-time employment; (f)in relation to a part-time eligible teacher, he changes the proportion of the working week he is employed to work; (g)his address changes.’

61. Looking at the Regulations we can see that Reg. 9 (1)(b) and 9 (1)(g) are both applicable to Mr A. Reg 9 (2) and Reg 9 (3) both also show that any applicant to the RTL scheme must tell the SLC about any changes and failure to do this may result in removal from the RTL scheme. The Regulations confirm this:

‘(2) Every applicant and every eligible teacher shall as soon as reasonably practicable after he is requested to do so provide the Secretary of State with such information as the Secretary of State considers necessary for the exercise of his functions under these Regulations.

(3) If the Secretary of State is satisfied that an eligible teacher has failed to comply with any requirement to provide information or has provided information which the eligible teacher knows to be false in a material particular or has recklessly provided information which is false in a material particular he may determine that the eligible teacher shall— (a)no longer be an eligible teacher under these Regulations, or (b)not be an eligible teacher for any particular repayment or reduction or particular amount of repayment or reduction as he considers appropriate in the circumstances.’

62. Mr A has questioned the SLC’s failure to contact him by other means of communication (for example, email) when it became clear he may be removed from the RTL scheme. We understand he feels very frustrated by this, because he had given the SLC an email address and he thinks the whole matter could have been avoided if it had used it.

63. As we can see from the legislation, the responsibility is on Mr A, as a beneficiary to the RTL scheme, to tell the SLC about any changes that could affect his eligibility. There is no requirement for the SLC to follow up with individuals who do not respond.

64. We appreciate that Mr A is deeply unhappy with the SLC and IA’s conclusions, and that he has been very stressed dealing with this complaint. Having considered his concerns and the evidence available to us, we have not seen any signs of fault in the SLC’s decision to remove him from the RTL scheme.

65. In applying for it, Mr A agreed to certain legal obligations that required him to keep the SLC informed of any personal and employment changes. He did not do this on two occasions meaning there was reason to remove him from the RTL scheme.

66. We will not take any further action with this complaint because the SLC acted in line with the relevant Regulations and the terms and conditions of the scheme. If Mr A is unhappy with the Regulations, then the best course of action would be for him to ask his MP to raise the matter in Parliament.

1. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about the Student Loans Company (SLC). Having looked at the evidence available to us and the relevant guidance, we have decided not to take any further action. This is because we cannot see any signs of failings by the SLC.

2. We appreciate Mr A disagrees with the SLC’s actions and tells us its decisions have had a significant financial impact on him. In reaching our decision we thought carefully about the concerns Mr A raised.

3. We hope this statement clearly explains why we have reached our decision to take no further action.