Thousands of UK Students Found to Have Overpaid Student Loans

Sixty-three thousand former British students were found to have been overcharged tens of millions of pounds in student loan collection, having to pay additional loan repayments to the Student Loans Company, which collects them on behalf of the British government.

The excess collection happened as graduates continued on repaying from their salary after graduation the student loans they have taken out to help fund university education.

According to an article on Press TV, the average amount each person overpaid was £577, although there are some graduates claiming to have paid over several thousand pounds more than the actual amount they owed.

In 2010-2011 an additional £36.5 million was found to have been collected from ex-students. This total is the highest amount so far taken by the SLC, an organisation founded in 1990 to provide UK students with low-interest loans. For its part the organisation blamed the problem on a lack of communication between the SLC and the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

The SLC is claiming the HMRC only gives the figures of how much each borrower has paid once a year, often a few weeks following the end of the financial year in April. The delay results to graduates who have paid off their loans during the year not having their direct payments stopped until several months later, when the SLC has already adjusted their records to reflect the figures from HMRC on how much they have already paid.

The government is now calling on those concerned to apply for refunds from the Student Loans Company (SLC). The SLC promises that all over-repayments will be refunded with interest. However, the initiative to request for a refund will have to come from the borrowers themselves.