Today I received a Final Annual Statement from the Student Loans Company. Unlike any other bank that I’ve dealt with this statement seems to be a bit out of date.
The statement is dated June 2006 (seems OK at this point), but when I looked at the statement something seemed wrong. I had paid £442.00 this year. Now this couldn’t be correct, since moving to Lincoln in Jan 2005 I took a pay cut which resulted in my annual salary being less than the £15,000 threshold. Only since this tax year through overtime have I started to begin to repay this loan (also now I have my annual pay rise plus my Council allowance, which clearly takes me above the threshold).
It was only then when looking closer did I realise that this statement refers to the period 06/04/2004 – 05/04/2005. That’s a period that ended some 14 months ago!
With the statement you get a lovely leaflet telling me what to do if I think that within the next 52 weeks my loan will have been paid off. This is to ensure that my employees and HM Revenue & Customs don’t take more than necessary. I can only contact the Student Loans Company if my repayments will be completed within the year, but if they don’t tell me how much I owe them for over 14 months there’s a possibility that I’ve already paid everything off (although very unlikely at the moment).
Finally the other issue I have is with the Government and not the Student Loans Company themselves. The amount of money I paid in during the last period was near enough equal to the amount of interest on the loan, and with the 2005 period of zero repayments my total loan will be higher on the next statement than the one I got last year.