Student Loans Grant Overpayment

Vlouise7

Hi all -

Wondering if someone can help me - I recently received a letter off student loans saying as I had not responded to past letters (I've not had any) re: a grant overpayment they had made, I owe them £369 and debt collectors would now be in touch.

I've logged onto my student finance and looked through the letters and it has a log of 3 other letters which I've never got stating the same as the one I did get, and then has one from Jan 2020 titled Grant Overpayment Letter. Every time I have clicked to look at this letter, it's unavailable and says to try again in 24 hours. I've tried it everyday for the past two weeks.

My last year in uni when I recieved a grant was 2015, but as I can't get on the letter I can't see when this grant overpayment is supposedly from and am weary of ringing as I don't want them to think I'm willing (or able) to pay this.

Is it normal for them to have taken this long to get in touch about an error on their end, and where do I stand with it? 

Apologies if I've posted in the wrong section but help/advice would be much appreciated!

Platespinner123

Hi,

It's quite possible that they've taken this long - the SLC is hardly famed for its administrative competence. But they might have missed the boat. If it's been six years, and during this time you have neither acknowledged in writing or paid towards the debt, then it should be statute-barred.

I think the starting point for the statute-bar 'timer' would be when the debt was incurred, i.e. when the overpayment was made. But others on here might be able to confirm, or you could contact National Debtline for some expert advice.

If I'm right about that, given that this overpayment must have been made at some point in 2015 at the latest, you're either at that stage or very close to it. So you could wait until you're certainly past the six years, and send them a version of National Debtline's statute barred debt template letter (I'm too new to post links, but when you find it, delete the references to the FCA, they don't apply to this type of debt)

If for some reason it's not statute-barred, you can contact them to ask for more details to confirm whether you owe it - this won't do you any harm, and you can ask them to put a pause on collection while you get your head around it, seeing as you didn't receive/couldn't access the letters. But don't do this until you know it's not statute-barred. If you do owe it, they can use the standard County Court Judgement route to enforce - so make sure they also have your up-to-date address details or you might miss the court papers.