Student loan error - Welsh partial repayment

jxn101

An unusual situation which I thought worth highlighting as it may also affect many others, and may not be noticed. 
I had my student loans through Student Finance Wales, so when I started repaying in 2012 I had the cancellation of £1,500. Student loan repayments carried on for several years with no issues. Back in March 2020, I was in a position where I was considering repaying my loan in full (it is due to be repaid in the next year anyway). I have always kept my own records based on monthly repayments and have reconciled these to the statements I receive each year. I noticed however that the opening balance for my most recent statement was £110 higher than the closing balance for the previous statement (dated the day before), so I contacted Student Loans to find out why. It's taken a long time, but I was recently told that this was due to the Welsh repayment being reallocated from 2012 to 2016, based (according to Student Loans) on information received from HMRC. I explained that this was incorrect and that it should be allocated to 2012 (when my repayments began - I have never claimed any refunds or anything). This is still ongoing and has been raised as a compliant with Student Loans - the excess has reduced to around £40 now but the issue is still unresolved. I thought I'd highlight it as Student Loans have been really awful in dealing with this and it may be affecting others too, and a lot of people probably wouldn't realise the difference in closing and opening balances.