Parental redundancy payment when assessing grant eligibility

tonywick

My son was awarded a grant of about £1K during the final year of his degree (completed Sept 11), based on an assessment that my wife and I had submitted in Sept 10, showing that our income for that academic year would be more than 15% reduced - as I had been "forced" into early retirement.

In April 11 my wife was made redundant, and received about £4K in a lump sum for the years she had worked.

In August we were asked to confirm our income for the academic year just finished, and my wife sent in her final salary slip, showing the redundancy payment.

In October the SLC started pursuing my son for repayment of about 40% of the grant, based on our income being greater than predicted. After threatening to take him to court, he's now paying that at £10 a month from his minimal part-time earnings.

The difference between estimate and actual is essentially the redundancy payment, but I don't believe that should be taken into account. Does anybody know for sure?

SLC have stopped responding to me since I pointed this out.

Apologies for length of this post (oops, now it's even longer!)

zandrew

Hello
Just wondered how this issue was resolved for you?
Thanks