"Less loan substituted for grant"

pitterpilot

Hi,

I have recently received my "Financial Notification" for the year 2009/2010. This will be my 2nd year.

I am 24, and classed as an independent student as I supplied evidence of 3 years full time work.

Last year, I received full loan, and a maintenance grant as follows:

Basic Loan: £3470
Loan subject to income assessment: £1155
Maintenance Grant: £2835

This year, however, a new entry has appeared on my Loan table, saying "Less loan substituted for grant". Which has taken £1292 from my loan. Clearly £100 a month is going to make a big difference to me.

My financial circumstances have not changed during the year, so I wonder why this has only been deducted from my loan this year.

I have run my local office and they told me that last year I had wrongly received a special support grant, however after double checking my forms this is incorrect (I will ring them back again once I have correctly researched what I am entitled to and where I stand)

Any help would be appreciated... Am I losing out, or was I just lucky to receive as much as I did last year?

Thanks,
Andrew

cymrubaby

andrewrchambers wrote: »

Hi,

I have recently received my "Financial Notification" for the year 2009/2010. This will be my 2nd year.

I am 24, and classed as an independent student as I supplied evidence of 3 years full time work.

Last year, I received full loan, and a maintenance grant as follows:

Basic Loan: £3470
Loan subject to income assessment: £1155
Maintenance Grant: £2835

This year, however, a new entry has appeared on my Loan table, saying "Less loan substituted for grant". Which has taken £1292 from my loan. Clearly £100 a month is going to make a big difference to me.

My financial circumstances have not changed during the year, so I wonder why this have only been deducted from my loan.

I have run my local office and they told me that last year I had wrongly received a special support grant, however after double checking my forms this is incorrect (I will ring them back again once I have correctly researched what I am entitled to and where I stand)

Any help would be appreciated... Am I losing out, or was I just lucky to receive as much as I did last year?

Thanks,
Andrew

It's been deducted from your loan as it's being paid to you via a grant instead which basically means less student loan for you to pay off once you're in full-time employment :beer:.

pitterpilot

I'm not sure whether to be thankful or not - it's less to pay back eventually I guess, but £100/month would make a lot of difference to paying my rent and bills etc.

Are there any special circumstances for not having this deducted? I wonder whether they have re-evaluated my application for some reason...

MrsManda

The grant plus the loan is more than you would get if you were just entitled to the loan but some of what would have been loan gets changed into grants therefore you should not lose anything. But this was the same last year as well as this so if there wasn't a a line saying 'Less loan substituted for grant' then your local office is probably right in saying you were wrongly assessed last year.

Also the figures you've posted are confusing and do make me think that your local office was right in saying you were wrongly assessed last year. I say this because the basic loan for 08/09 was £4855 with income assessed being an additional £1620 (basic loan is 75% of the total available with the income assessed being the extra 25%).
The basic loan for this year is £4982

Check your student finance account for 08/09 and 09/10 and see if there is any differences between how they've assessed you.

student_advisor

Sounds like you were definitely awarded the special support grant instead of the maintenance grant last year. You are only entitled to this if you are a lone parent or claim disability benefits. If you do fall in to one of these categories, you were wrongly assessed last year, in which case, you should just be glad they're not demanding repayment, which they are entitled to do.

dmv_2

I am going into my third year in September and have previously recieved the special support grant. I noticed I hadn't this year and like the OP I got the "less loan substituted for grant" and was worse off. I called my LEA and was told it would get sorted but a week later recieved a letter saying that I was not entitled to the special support grant last year and it was their mistake, and the lower amount of assessment I recieved this year is correct. Very annoying when I like you am an independent student who does not live with/rely on parents and so will really feel the difference as it is not "spending money" but food/bills money (all of which have gone up this year!). I guess the way to look at it is that we got lucky previously and are not being asked to repay instantly, not that I could anyway but still.