student loan dept that has gone to county court

Alokakarun

I applied for my first year at Kingston University upon themes in 2021 during the applying season. Whilst applying for student finance England to fund my first year of studies I accidentally chose the wrong year. Instead of applying for the academic year of 2021/2022, I applied for the year 2020/2021.  I didn’t notice my mistake and wasn’t told I made a mistake by Student Finance England, instead, they approved my application and sent me relevant letters to keep me informed of when the ‘expected payments will be made to the university. my university also saw no issue on their records when accepting me into the university

 

Being suspended from Kingston University 

I received an email, that I would be suspended until further notice due to the lack of any payments to the university about my degree,  28 January 2022. They disabled my ID card therefore I couldn’t find certain buildings without using my keycard. I asked fellow students to open the door whenever we had classes via message. I was able to complete my final year performance for my drama section however, I was told later that I would only get those marks when I was re-enrolled back into the university. I wasn’t however able to upload my English essays. After I finished the year, I tried to speak to people from student aid to sort out suspension issues however the numbers they gave and the buildings they recommended that I go to always led to dead ends, and during this time I was still looking after my mother and my attention stopped on the matter. 

 

Going to university to sort out the suspension  

In 2022 a couple of months before my expected start date for my second year of my degree, I went back to the university and spoke face-to-face with student aid and finance to solve the issue of suspension. Once again, I was only directed to receptionists and superficial persons who didn’t understand the issue. They eventually told me to speak to Student Finance England directly to solve the issue of money owed. It was a back-and-forth between Student Finance England and Kingston trying to sort out the issue however each establishment told me to speak to the other side to solve things. 

 

Dept collector extension  

A woman speaks to me over the phone asking if I can pay any amount to stop this issue going to the debt collectors. (1st March 2022) I explained to her  why I am unemployed and have no money to my name. she then offered to put my record on her system and gave me ‘breathing space (60 days) after I told her: that I had started the process of reapplying for a student loan from Student Finance England and it could take 3 to 6 weeks to be approved. She emailed me the discussion we had after the call ended.  I intended to pay through a student-finance loan.

 

Reapplying for student finance England  

I tried to reapply for a student loan. I had to send my application via post due to the time passed to do it online. When I first sent my application, correspondence was sent to me saying that the issue of approving my application was because they were unsure if I attended all my classes, in December 2022, I asked for a lecturer of mine to give me a reference that stated I attended all my classes and sent this reference with a new application, I was then told this was not the reason why my application was denied but because of another reason, that I needed to show my parent's financial information. (February 2023) I resend the application and wait for it to be approved. I could see the progress of my application online via the Student Finance England account.  Between September to October of 2023, I applied for a student loan for my current university, B University, before I applied, I checked up on my student loan login page, and all my processing applications were gone. I called Student Finance England and explained my situation and asked, if would it be an issue to apply for a different university through Student Finance England. The man on the phone said it wouldn’t and my earlier histories had been cleared. I mistakenly understood his statement as my debt had been cleared. However, later my understanding of why this method failed was because of my 9-month period of applying for a previous year's loan had expired.

 Student finance dept stopped calling and I, therefore, put my mind to looking after my mother 

but now dept letters have come to my address. I have filed a dispute against the claim of 10,000 including interest. I'm gathering email and letter evidence to write a statement of dispute

however is this the right way to proceed?

fatbelly

If you've received a claim then you are entitled to defend the claim. Provided you have done this within the timescales the court will consider your defence and put it to the claimant.

If the claimant wants to proceed there will probably be a hearing. The claimant pays the fee and it gets added to the sum in dispute.

Voyager2002

I suggest that you ask your MP for help. Student finance are not responding appropriately, and no-one competent has taken note of the problem.

silvercar

I’ll ask the forum team to move this to the student board.

good luck, I’ve seen other threads where student finance are difficult to deal with.

sourcrates

It is important the OP deal with the actual claim within the rigid timescales otherwise a CCJ by default will be granted against them.