Oliver Heald: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills what assessment he has made of the efficiency of the Student Loans Company in processing student loan applications at the beginning of the academic year; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Willetts: The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills reviews the performance and efficiency of the Student Loans Company (SLC) on an ongoing basis and SLC is committed to continuously improving the quality of service it delivers.
For the 2011/12 academic year, SLC had by 14 October received 1,001,000 eligible applications for core financial support from English-domiciled students and had prepared 904,000 (90%) for payment to be made once attendance on the course had been confirmed by the university or college. Of those prepared for payment, 874,000 (97%) have received the full entitlement or will receive the full entitlement once attendance has been confirmed.
865,000 applications prepared for payment include a maintenance support entitlement, and of these 814,000 (94%) have now been paid. These figures were published by the SLC on 25 October and are available at:
http://www.slc.co.uk/pdf/SLCOSP102011.pdf
This is an improvement on previous years, thanks in part to processing improvements introduced by SLC this year, including a largely automated reassessment process for returning students who applied for non-means-tested support and whose circumstances have not changed and the introduction of an electronic link with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs to automatically verify household income, meaning SLC was able to process the majority of new students' applications for means-tested support without asking customers to send in paper copies of financial evidence.