Just to add some personal experience and hope it helps people in a similar situation - my son having applied to a UK university this year. He's a UK citizen, born in the UK but we've lived in Belgium since he was 4. He applied for UK finance tuition and maintenance loans successfully, but not without many phone calls and conflicting advice.
For the UK finance you do need a National Insurance Number ( NINO ) and a UK bank account if you apply for a maintenance loan, though you can supply both of these after submitting the application. We were told that as we claimed child benefit, he could fill in HMRC's form CA5403 to get his existing, but dormant NINO, which he did back in May. Several months later and many phone calls to HMRC, we were told they'd changed the rules, wouldn't send the NINO abroad and he'd have to wait till he starts his course in the UK to get the interview with Job Centre for his NINO. We were concerned because his Student Finance application says you need the NINO one month before the start of the course or the tuition payment wouldn't be made. But a phone call to the university confirmed that as long as the Finance application is in place, the university will wait.
The student bank account was also a nightmare to sort out, so I'd recommend getting that sorted out as soon as possible. You can't get a student account until your place at university is confirmed, but you can start up a normal account and either ask to have it made into a student account or start a student account later when you're in the UK - this probably depends on the bank.
One final problem we faced was the support for the maintenance loan. If you want your parents' income declared to get the highest possible maintenance loan, then they fill in supporting online applications. But they will later be asked for proof of this declared income, including foreign income and if this is not in English they will also be asked for a certified translation. We found that as parents, we couldn't return to our submitted application to see what we'd declared and made a small error in our posted proof, which caused more letters to/from.
Sorry for lengthy reply, but this has been a very frustrating process and if this helps anyone else even only slightly, it will have been worthwhile. Good luck!