Advice: Student Loans Recontact After 10 years abroad

Justin80

Hello dear money savers,


I received full student loans from September 1998 onwards, and then after graduating I worked in the UK for a few years and my student loan repayments were automatically deducted from my account with my tax and so forth.


Then I left the UK to work abroad for a very low wage and I have not been back since.


I had assumed, like so many others in my situation, that my absence from the UK taxable work world would just mean that I had no job in the UK with which to pay funds back (and I am pretty sure now that I have been under the repayment earnings threshold the whole time that I have been abroad, so my position kind of still fits that idea).


I have heard from colleagues, however, that since my move abroad the Student Loans Company (SLC) have become a lot more serious about recuperating loans repayments, and are becoming more active in punishing those who have gone abroad without informing them (because there are so many graduates who have gone abroad and possibly won't ever pay the loans back.)


Could someone please advise me on my best course of action here? Should I go straight to SLC immediately, and risk putting myself 'on their radar,' so to speak, and kind of drop myself in some big trouble, or should I wait it out until I am employed in UK again and they begin taking payments out of my taxable salary?


I really want to do the right thing here, but I have seen elsewhere on the internet - in news articles and so on that some people regret contacting SLC from abroad, or that it is not worth the hassle because they are so disorganised.



Many thanks,


Justin

System

Ultimately it depends on your morals and your appetite for risk. I wouldn't say SLC is punishing those who went abroad without informing them rather that they're quite rightly asking for what is owed for that period. It was made quite clear in the literature you were given that if you went abroad your income over there would still have the same test applied for repayments as if you were in the UK.

If you've been under the repayment threshold for that time and have proof of that then there's no reason not to contact them and it could save a lot of grief down the line especially if you're currently in an EU country where you may find that post 29th March you may need to leave.

Justin80

Thanks, Tarambor.


Yes, I have been thinking that it is better to get it all out in the open and move forward in the proper manner.


Like you say it could may well be a matter of just providing evidence that I have been under the threshold the whole time (which I'm pretty sure I have).


I'd better contact them soon. I just hope that they go easy on me.


Thanks again.