Loans company 'confident' of paying students on time
The Student Loans Company has told The Rundown that it is "confident" of paying loans on time to students who applied on time, and processing has gone much better than last year.
Advice issued in November that new students should apply as early as possible appears to have been heeded: by 1st July, the final deadline for new students to apply 'on time', the number of applications ready for payment was around 50% ahead of the same time in the previous cycle.
That figure includes applications from continuing students, some of whom may have been encouraged to get on with their applications this year following last autumn's chaos. A students' union was forced to hand out tins of beans to students whose loans had not come through, universities delayed taking tuition fee payments and wet t-shirt competitions were sought to earn much-needed cash.
Local education authorities have also performed better in processing applications, the SLC reported. One reason for that could be that the £30m computer system forced on them last year may actually work properly now. Some LEAs reported major problems with it, resulting in applications taking much longer.
"Processing by local education authorities has been significantly ahead of last year, we are now well into the peak for term start dates and are confident that all on-time applicants will continue to be paid on time," the SLC said in a statement.
Send this article to a friend