Greetings All,
Just wondering if anyone else has found themselves in this ridiculous situation (unlikely I think lol), and of course if anyone has any advice to offer that would be gratefully received.
I will attempt to sum it up concisely, but as you know, these things are never that simple.
My OH (co-habiting) has been a student. He completed the first and second year of his degree, then began to have problems in his third year, he then applied to repeat his third year on medical grounds. The Uni let him return to attempt his third year again, unfortunately, he became unwell again and left his course on 18/10/07.
On 14/1/08 my OH received the second term student loan payment for his repeat third year, he was no longer a student and was not entitled to this money.
The payment was made because no-one informed the LEA of his withdrawal from the course, and in turn, the LEA did not inform the SLC. Upon withdrawing from the course my OH did ask the Uni if he needed to do anything further with regard to informing other bodies of his student status ceasing. He was told no, that the Uni would do it, he need do nothing further. Apparently this may not be the case and it may be my OH who failed to inform the LEA, and not the Uni, it isn't clear.
On 11/1/08 we became aware that this second term student loan payment was going to be put into our bank account on 14/1/08. We tried to stop the payment being made, but were told by the SLC that they could not stop the payment. The payment went in as expected. The SLC also told us that this amount would be added to my OH's outstanding student loan balance and that they would not be demanding it back from us. They refused to issue a letter stating that the payment had been made in error.
My OH and I hold a current joint claim for IS. I am the Claimant. My OH's student income has been taken into account when calculating our entitlement to benefits throughout the period he was a student.
On 11/1/08 after learning that this erroneous second term loan payment would be paid to us, I informed the JCP that we would be receiving this money. I rang them initially and then posted a letter the following day. Included in this letter was a copy of the letter from the Uni stating my OH's official leaving date, 18/10/07. (I had not sent this to them previously as we had not yet received it from the Uni, it finally arrived in Jan). Within this letter I also requested that the erroneous second term loan payment not be taken into account when reassessing our claim, since this payment would become debt that my OH needn't have (and was money he wasn't entitled to anyway), and he wanted to pay it back to the SLC.
The JCP wrote back to me and requested i) confirmation of my OH's leaving date, and ii) confirmation that he was no longer entitled to a student loan. We attempted to get a letter from the SLC confirming the my OH was no longer entitled to a student loan. The SLC would not issue us with such a letter because if my OH had an official leaving date and was no longer a student, it was implicit within that, that he wasn't entitled to any student income. Explained this to the JCP (phone call) and said I would not be able to provide such a second document for the above reason.
I also asked the JCP about what would happen with the erroneous second term loan payment during this phone call. I was told that if I could provide a letter from the SLC stating that they would be expecting this money back, then the JCP would discount it and allow my OH to pay it back. At the time, the SLC had said that they wouldn't be demanding this money back, and wouldn't give us a letter saying that they were.
The JCP said that they would therefore have to take this loan payment into account, and continued to pay our IS at the same reduced rate as when my OH was a student.
On 22/3/08 my OH received a letter dated 13/3/08 from the SLC saying that, actually, they were demanding the second term loan payment back. Apparently, the previous information we were given was incorrect. They are charging interest on the amount.
We cannot pay this money back to the SLC, we do not have it, we have had to use it to live on because the JCP forced us to.
Sent a copy of the SLC letter of 13/3/08 to the JCP and asked for our claim to be reassessed for the period which the erroneous second term loan payment covered. Requested that the loan payment be discounted for this period so that we could pay it back to the SLC.
On 2/4/08 I received a letter from the JCP dated 1/4/08 which states "Please can you send in confirmation that this loan has been repaid and until it has we will continue to take it in as part of your Income Support claim."
I replied to this letter the following day explaining that unless they reassess my claim and discount the second term loan payment, there's no way we can pay it back because we were forced to live off it. We don't have it, and we won't unless the JCP discount it and give it us back.
I then heard nothing.
On 22/4/08 I phoned the JCP. They called me back the following day to tell me that my claim will have to be sent to a decision maker, and that they might not be allowed by law to return the erroneous second term loan payment to us until after we had paid it back.
Had my OH still been a student his third term loan payment would have been made on 7/4/08. Regardless of whether the JCP take into account the second term loan payment or not, he now definitely does not have a student income. The JCP knew that this would occur, but they have not bothered to adjust the claim to reflect it and are still paying us at a reduced rate as if my OH still had a student income. Despite knowing in Jan that my OH was no longer a student, no-one has reassessed the claim so that the IS payments returned to the full rate, be it at the start of the second or third term. They couldn't tell me why this had not been done.
I have now been told that it will all take a few weeks to sort out, and they have no idea where I stand with regard to the second term loan payment as yet. Until this is all done, they will continue to pay us at a reduced rate.
They are giving us £58.11 per week to live on and have told us to get a crisis loan if we can't survive on that ... pushing us into further debt. They also expect me to begin paying the SLC out of this! Even if we had the full rate of IS, the loan payment will literally take years to pay back if we are forced to pay it out of our benefit first before the JCP will give it us back.
So, does anyone have any idea at all where I stand amongst all this?
Is there anything I can say or do which will aid my position with either the SLC or the JCP?
Is there any way I can get the SLC to accept that they just aren't going to get this money back if the JCP stick to what they've said?
TIA for any help/advice ... comments of sympathy also accepted, this thing is a nightmare and I feel incredibly disenfranchised by the whole situation.
Thanks also for reading, congrats on making it to the end!
Ridiculous Situation - SLC & Income Support 
