$hits gonna hit the fan!

Taiko

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8575051.stm

Few keys bits:

It made slow progress, with only 46% of the applications fully processed by the start of the 2009 term compared with 63% the previous year, it added.
Overall, it processed claims a third more slowly than local authorities had the previous year.

It had used a new document scanning system which was untested and then failed.
This led to a dramatic increase in the volume of telephone calls, with the company receiving four million in September alone - 87% of which went unanswered, the report added.
Over the 12 months from February 2009, it only answered about half of the telephone calls made to its call centre.

It said "weaknesses" in the SLC identified in 2006, should have "served as a warning of the risks attached to such a challenging programme".

Just on those points, and the fact an extra £16million was pumped into the SLC this year, it's really kind of worrying. If I were studying, I'd be applying right away now. It was also nice that all warnings given to them years ago were ignored.

Masomnia

Mmm I texted my sister earlier to remind her to do it after seeing this. 'Yeah I'll do it sometime this weekend...' I'm feeling very fortunate to be graduating and not having the stress of dealing with this again!

Really, if you haven't done it, do it now.

ultimatedingbat

Yeah the !!!!!! is going to hit the fan with this. If mine gets screwed up I'm in 3rd year and cant deal with that type of stress.

atypical

Taiko, could you confirm that those who have previously been dealt with by their local authority will continue to be? In which case anyone who started their course pre-2009 shouldn't have any problems.

melancholly

you think they'd learn something from the last year.....! the worrying thing will be that uni budgets are being cut - i hope that won't impact on the emergency funds some were able to give this year to help people who were paid late!

Taiko

Students who have previously been dealt with by LEA's will continue to be for the 10/11 year. From 11/12, all applications will be adminisetred centrally. This could change, depending on the election.

Saying that, LEA's are losing staff rapidly. If it continues, some LEA's may close down and transfer processing a lot sooner than March 2011. I'm sure the LEA would advise what the outcome was.

rev_henry

I applied a couple of months ago now (first year) and the other day had an email asking for my mother's P60 AGAIN. After initially getting rather flustered that they or the Royal Mail had lost it, when we rang them they said they're only processing things that they received on 22nd Feb! This was a couple of days ago. So there's already a backlog. Fantastic.

elfen

Am so glad I'm going to be a second year in September and I've already sorted my finance

saverholic

Thanks for this. It prompted to me to actually submit my already completed application form . I'm hoping it will go through ok but since my younger sis started uni SLC seems to get confused with what bits of paper they want off each of us so I'm preparing myself for if (/when) it goes wrong.

Taiko

I'll be on hand to try and guide as many people through as I can. I don't think I'm going to be able to take on individual cases this year, but I'll see what I can do.

Blacksheep1979

this is what you get if you try to ram as many people as possible into FE without upgrading the infrastructure.