Poor communication and delays in processing funding application
19. Ms X complains SLC gave her wrong advice on which application form to use when she changed her course title in July 2018. She says SLC then delayed processing her application saying there was a technical error and did not tell her when it would be fixed, despite her chasing this repeatedly. She says at this time, she was not able to pay her university fees and went into debt. She also experienced a severe decline in her physical and mental health that led to a mental health crisis and stopping her studies.
20. The IA found that SLC had wrongly approved Ms X’s application as early as February 2018 when she was treated as a ‘returning’ student instead of a ‘new’ student. That was the first error that SLC failed to recognise. SLC repeated this error in July 2018 when Ms X changed her course title. This meant Ms X had to file a new application in January 2019.
21. The IA then found that SLC communicated poorly with Ms X from January to March 2019. SLC at first told Ms X it expected to process the application around mid-February, but when it became aware of the system error causing delays, it did not update Ms X. It then failed to give a timescale when Ms X called it many times to see when she could expect her application to be approved.
22. We agree with the IA’s findings that SLC knew about Ms X’s disability and it should have been obvious that these errors and delays would cause anyone anxiety, but particularly to Ms X because of her mental health and its impact on her daily life. We agree that SLC did not do enough to reduce the risk to Ms X’s wellbeing and its poor communication is evidence of service failure.
23. The IA recommended SLC pay Ms X £300 in recognition of the stress and increased anxiety she went through.
24. Our Principles say that where poor service has led to an injustice, the organisation should try to return complainants to the position they were in before the poor service took place or compensate them appropriately.
25. The IA makes recommendations based on the cases it has dealt with before. To see whether we think its recommendation was right, we used our severity of injustice scale. This says that where poor service has caused distress and worry that does not impact on a healthy adult’s daily functioning, up to a period of six months (or a shorter period with more serious distress) we are likely to recommend a payment of £100 to £450.
26. Ms X first became aware of the suspension in her payments in mid-January 2019 and submitted a new application shortly afterwards. The delays lasted until SLC made a manual payment in late April. The delay was about three and a half months.
27. At the time, Ms X’s health had already got worse and this added to her distress and worry and made things more difficult for her. Although the poor service was unlikely to be the only cause, it was very likely a contributing factor.
28. We consider SLC’s payment of £300 to be appropriate and in line with our Principles. If Ms X has not already received this money, she should write to SLC with her bank account details so this can be paid to her.
Recovery of overpayments
29. Ms X said SLC overpaid her in June 2019 in error and then asked her to pay it back, causing her more distress and worry.
30. Our Principles say that where an organisation has made a mistake, it should acknowledge the mistake and try to return the complainant to the position they were in before the mistake happened.
31. HM Treasury guidance says that in principle, organisations should always try to recover overpayments unless there is a valid reason why that should not happen. For example, where recovery would cause hardship, which must be well supported by evidence.
32. There is no dispute that the technical error in SLC’s system meant that once the payment block on Ms X’s account was lifted in June 2019, SLC automatically released payments of DSA to Ms X that were not due. It also made further manual payments without knowing Ms X had suspended her studies in mid-April. This led to overpayments totalling £2,902.
33. Ms X suspended her studies in mid-April due to ill health. As the IA found, under these circumstances SLC accepted she was entitled to some funding for 60 days after she stopped studying. She had no entitlement to funding after this.
34. Ms X did not tell SLC about the suspension at the time, but she told SLC by email in May that she would like to be paid through the summer term manually. This led to SLC making another payment in September. SLC did not know Ms X had stopped her studies until the university’s notification in September.
35. SLC must recover overpayments in line with the relevant policies and guidance. While we appreciate that getting the wrong amount and having to deal with the situation would likely have caused uncertainty, worry and stress, Ms X should have known she had no entitlement to those funds after her suspension. She did not experience a financial loss from the overpayments.
36. We do not see a sign of service failing in SLC recovering the overpayments. Once repaid, Ms X will be in the same financial position she would have been in had the mistake – the overpayment – not happened.
37. We understand that Ms X fought a long battle to improve her physical and mental health. We are pleased to hear she got appropriate treatment and she seems to be doing better. We wish her every success in the future and hope she will be able to put this incident behind her and achieve her goals.