19.Miss A stopped her studies from September 2009 to February 2010, meaning her student finance should have also been stopped during that time.
20. We understand the University and Miss A were both responsible for telling SLC about her decision to temporarily stop her studies. This is because students are only eligible for student finance when they are attending their course. The Education (Student Support) Regulations 2005 define what an eligible student is.
21. If SLC had been told at the time, it would have given it chance to review and reassess Miss A’s entitlement and find any possible overpayments.
22.In situations like Miss A’s, the student finance application should be reassessed. This means student finance will be awarded from the point where the student restarts their studies.
23.SLC was first made aware of Miss A’s stopping of her studies in June 2014. On 22 January 2016, SLC approved its final assessment of Miss A’s student finance application. The £1,000 HEG had been correctly awarded by the SLC in September 2009, as it was not aware of the stopping of studying at that time. SLC wrote to Miss A on 26 January 2016 to tell her about the reassessment and that it had caused an overpayment of £1,000.
24.By giving an incorrectly calculated award, we can see SLC had not acted in line with its duties under the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2005, to accurately calculate her entitlement.
25.Miss A contacted SLC on 23 June 2016 to ask about her account and the £1,000 overpayment. SLC explained she had been overpaid the HEG after she stopped her studies and Miss A argued this was incorrect because she had completed her degree. SLC told her to get in touch with the University, who contacted SLC on the same day to explain Miss A’s attendance dates.
26.The University told SLC Miss A did not start her 2009-10 studies at the beginning of the year but had restarted her studies on 1 February 2010. Considering this new information, SLC reassessed Miss A’s student finance application for the 2009-10 academic year. But, during this reassessment SLC made a mistake and treated Miss A as if she were a new student in September 2009, rather than as a returning student. This was another error in the reassessment process and not in line with the above regulations.
27.This meant SLC assessed Miss A as being eligible for a Maintenance Grant, rather than the HEG. Because of this, SLC made a payment of £911 on 8 August 2016. This clearly confused Miss A, who was already trying to understand what had happened.
28.Miss A complained to SLC in August 2016 after she was contacted by a debt collection agency trying to collect the £1,000 overpayment. After she made her complaint, SLC told Miss A that the overpayment had been removed and she thought the matter had been resolved.
29.The records show there was no further action on the complaint until December 2018 when SLC contacted her and asked her to repay the HEG. Miss A made two repayment instalments, in January and February 2019. Miss A explained she had contacted SLC to check if this was correct and then wrote to it on 20 March because she was still confused about her account and her HEG.
30.SLC complaints team sent a first response and said Miss A had received a HEG overpayment of £1,000 for the 2009-10 academic year and this had been repaid in the two separate repayments of January and February 2019. SLC apologised for the inconsistent information she had been given and said the repayments were correct.
31.SLC also said that because Miss A had been living abroad since September 2016, she had not been meeting her expected monthly payments for the loan amounts she was entitled to (this was separate to the overpayment amount). Because of this her account was now in arrears. SLC noted that Miss A had made the necessary arrangements to make repayments that would cover the outstanding loan repayments and her arrears.
32.SLC complaints team called Miss A on 21 August 2019 to discuss the complaint because she had explained she did not understand how the overpayment had happened to begin with. SLC explained the history of the overpayment.
33.There had been an error on SLC’s system which meant students who had been paid in 2010, did not show up in its debt overpayment system until 2016. This is why it sent her the letter she got in January 2016.
34.Miss A sent an email on 16 October 2019 and repeated her concerns. The complaints team sent another response on 20 November 2019. SLC also addressed concerns she made about data security, after she was sent information for another student. It said her concerns had been passed to the data security team and any emails sent to her in error should be deleted.
35.SLC tried to reassure Miss A that her data was secure and had not been shared and it apologised for the stress she had experienced. In recognition of this, SLC made a payment of £50.
36.Miss A sent another email on 27 November 2019 and said her complaint had been misunderstood. She repeated her concerns about the overpayment. The complaints team called Miss A on 11 December 2019. It said she was awarded a HEG of £1,000 and a loan payment of £3,319 in the 2009-10 academic year. After the reassessment in January 2016, her HEG had been removed and replaced by the Maintenance Grant.
37.SLC said because she had been awarded £1,000, she was entitled to another£911, making a total of £1,911. SLC also said she should not have been asked to repay the £1,000. SLC said that as she had paid in February 2019, this money would be refunded to her.
38.SLC’s head of operations called Miss A on 7 January 2020 with a second response and said they had reviewed the account and would give more information.
39.They apologised for the service and incorrect advice she had had and for the poor handling of her complaint before. They went on to say that Miss A would have always had an overpayment, because the University and Miss A did not tell SLC about Miss A’s stopping of studying.
40.They also recognised that the overpayment was much higher because of SLC’s actions and the mistakes it made. They offered Miss A a payment of £200 to help resolve the complaint.
41.On 16 January 2020 Miss A asked for her complaint to go to the IA for the Department for Education (DfE). Miss A said the amount SLC offered was not enough and did not acknowledge the stress and frustration she had experienced. Miss A also raised concerns about phone calls she had received about the overpayment, at a time when she said she thought the issues had been resolved.
42.The IA reviewed Miss A’s complaint and it said, ‘it is fair to say that throughout the matter she actively tried to establish the correct position’. It described SLC’s handling of her complaint and concerns as ‘clumsy’. The IA report explained SLC made mistakes when doing reassessments of Miss A’s application, with incorrect calculations and conflicting information about the overpayment, that affected the debt recovery process.
43.The IA said Miss A contacted SLC to try and find the correct status of the overpayment and SLC gave more incorrect information. The IA described this situation as ‘unacceptable’, particularly as the complaint process is supposed to review, clarify and resolve issues. In Miss A’s case, SLC did the opposite. The IA noted Miss A’s repayments in January and February 2020 and said that it could see why she felt ‘aggrieved’.
44.The IA explained SLC must follow HM Treasury guidance. This guidance addresses situations where a public sector organisation may have acted with fault, causing an individual hardship or putting them in a negative position. When this happens the organisation should, ‘Provide remedies so that, as far as reasonably possible, they restore the wronged party to the position that they would have been in had things been done correctly’.
45.The IA said that in Miss A’s case SLC had apologised several times and done a review, giving an explanation during the second response. SLC also offered a payment. The IA said SLC’s actions to put things right were appropriate and went some way to address the service failings.
46.The IA said it could not write off any overpayments. The DfE can decide to write off overpayments of funds but the Treasury guidance explains that overpayments should be recovered, even if they are because of an SLC error.
47.We can see SLC made several errors in the way it handled Miss A’s case, including wrongly calculating her entitlement and communicating with her poorly. These actions are not in line with the Education Regulations 2005, or our Principles of Good Administration, that say public organisations should act in line with applicable legislation and their own policies and processes.
48.All parties agree SLC made mistakes and failed to give a good service. The issue is whether it has done enough to put things right for Miss A.
49.Miss A is not asking for the overpayment to be written off, she has never disputed that she will pay what she owes. She is unhappy and distressed that she has been given inconsistent and unhelpful information over a long period of time about what she owes and why. She says a financial payment equal to the overpayment would be a good way to put things right.
50.In practical terms, while SLC has acknowledged and accepted the overpayment is its error, under the Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations 2009 and the Treasury guidance it still needs to collect the money. We can see that Miss A does not meet the specific criteria for writing off overpayments.
51.For this reason, we have not seen any signs of a failing in SLC’s decision not to put the overpayment to one side.
52.There is no avoidable financial loss we can find that has been caused by the overpayment. SLC confirmed it has not charged interest on the overpayment amount. Miss A does say she faced costs when having to call SLC to try and sort out the problems it was responsible for.
53.We have thought about this and understand it was open to Miss A to contact SLC by phone or email. Sending emails would not result in international call costs. We can also see that SLC made many attempts to contact her by phone, but Miss A did not feel comfortable answering those calls.
54.With this in mind, we have not seen that SLC’s mistakes meant Miss A had to call SLC and face avoidable costs, so we have not made any recommendations for this.
55.We also understand SLC has set up a repayment plan that Miss A has agreed to and is affordable for her.
56.This leaves the emotional impact on Miss A. The IA acknowledged that Miss A felt disappointed and upset by SLC’s actions. Miss A described how upsetting and frightening she found dealing with the debt collection agencies and the IA acknowledged this could be ‘an unpleasant and difficult experience’. We also recognise this must have been very worrying and stressful for her.
57.The IA decided that Miss A should have had much better customer service from SLC and recommended a payment of £400.
58.It is clear Miss A found the complaints process stressful and upsetting. The length of time these matters have been ongoing for has clearly had an impact on Miss A and the repeated errors and incorrect calculations have added to her feelings of stress and frustration.
59.We are pleased to see SLC has agreed to make a payment to Miss A as recommended by the IA, but we think it should do more to put right the emotional impact caused by its errors.