Student Loans Company's error led to overpayment

What happened

Mr G applied for income–assessed student finance in the second year of his degree course. The SLC did not properly input Mr G's Family income and so paid him a maintenance grant more than twice what it should have been. It was not until Mr G applied for student finance in his third year that the error was spotted. He was not paid a grant in the third year to cover the overpayment.

In autumn of the third year, Mr G's mother complained to the SLC but because of an error, staff did not refer the complaint to the complaints team. Mr G's mother complained again early the following year and the SLC sent an email in response to her complaint, but she did not receive it. Mr G's mother contacted the SLC again in spring 2012 and it re–sent the email.

The SLC apologised to Mr G for its inputting error and paid him £200. It also paid the full grant for his third year, which meant recovery of the overpayment was deferred until after Mr G had completed his course.

What we found

We partly upheld this complaint. It was the SLC's fault that the overpayment occurred. But Mr G should have been aware that he had been paid too much because the grant payment was more than twice the amount he had received the year before. The £200 compensation and apology was an appropriate remedy for the worry and distress caused.

It was reasonable that the SLC decided to recover the overpayment, but we saw no evidence that it had considered or documented whether it should have used its discretion to write off the overpayment. The SLC told us what guidance it had in place for considering requests to write off an overpayment. We were satisfied it understood the discretion it had for writing off an overpayment.

It was unreasonable that the SLC did not respond to the complaint in autumn 2011. If Mr G's mother had not chased matters, she would not have received a response to the complaint. We found this caused inconvenience.

Putting it right

The SLC apologised for the poor complaint handling and the inconvenience this caused.