Student Loans Company recognised its delay caused student inconvenience, but it did not misadvise him

What happened

Mr T started a university course in one academic year, but then dropped out. A few months later, in the same academic year, he started another course at a different university. He applied for student finance, but heard nothing in the weeks leading up to starting his new course. With two weeks to go, he telephoned the SLC to find out what was going on, because he needed to give confirmation of his student funding to his new university.

The SLC told Mr T that it would consider his application and would send him an acknowledgement email in two or three days to confirm it had received it. Mr T said the SLC told him he could use this to show the university his student funding was confirmed.

However, Mr T did not receive an email in two or three days. He got one in three weeks, which told him how much student funding he had received that academic year. He thought this email was the acknowledgement he had been promised. He showed it to his new university. However, two months later, the SLC told Mr T and his new university that it was not awarding him student finance for that financial year. The university asked Mr T to pay the tuition fees, but he could not do this.

Mr T complained to the SLC about the situation. He said the SLC had misadvised him, and led him to believe he would receive student funding, when he did not. His case was eventually considered by the SLC's independent assessor who found that Mr T had not been misadvised. Mr T had not received student funding because he had already received the equivalent of two years of funding, and could only receive a maximum of one more year. As his new course was a two–year course, the SLC could fund one, but not both years. The independent assessor also found Mr T had not been misadvised, but there had been a delay in approving Mr T's application. As a result of the inconvenience Mr T suffered, the SLC offered him a compensation payment of £25.

What we found

We did not uphold this complaint. The independent assessor was correct, Mr T had not been misadvised.

When Mr T received the email, he also got a copy in the post. If he had read both of those versions in full, he would have found out it referred to his previous university, which he had dropped out of earlier that year. If he had not understood the letters, he should have contacted the SLC to confirm what was happening. He did neither of those things.

The SLC acknowledged it took it some time to complete Mr T's application. It should have done this sooner, and this caused Mr T some inconvenience. It therefore offered him £25 compensation for that. We found this was a suitable sum to offer for that fault.