Outstanding student loan from 1998

David_Stoddart

I started university in 1998 and graduated in 2003. I took out a student loan each year I was in University. I started work straight away and began student loan repayments, automatically from my pay, the same year. I received an annual statement each year showing the outstanding balance until it was fully paid off about 7 years ago and I had a final statement showing a zero outstanding balance.

I have now suddenly received a new annual statement showing an outstanding balance of nearly £4000. When I queried this with the SLC they informed me that for some reason my records showed that I had 2 separate customer references and that for some unknown reason 1 of those accounts had not been linked to my National insurance no. The outstanding balance relates to a loan I took in my first year i.e. 1998 and the loans for the remaining 4 years had all been paid off.

The initial loan value was £2700 which with interest now stands at nearly £4000. They admitted on the phone that this was some sort of error on their part.

Am obliged to pay back this loan? Is it possible for me to at least have the last 7 years of interest removed as I would of paid this back in the same time frame as the other loans?