Help please :-(

Hi

I really need some help with a tricky situation.
I started my degree in 2006 and half way through second year (Feb 2008) I had to leave due to a personal issue.
I returned to my course in September of 2009. When I applied for my student finance the LEA (Sunderland city council) said I had been overpaid a grant and they needed to recover it out of my entitlement. I asked if I could appeal this decision and they said yes. The LEA came back to say student finance had agreed to defer the repayment to the END of my course.
From this point on I received a manual payment into my account for my grants usually the day after my student loan was received.
Fast forward to present day! On 31st Jan 2011 the student finance company took over from LEA and all my dealings were to be with them from now on. I received a new entitlment dated 23rd March 2011 which basically stated they had taken my grants off me and I owed them money and I would only receive my maintenance loan in April. My total student award had been slashed from £8814.42 to £4723.00 just like that!
I spoke to them and advised them of this agreement in regards to the defered maintenance payment as agreed in September 2009. Their answer was that this agreement was with Sunderland not them. I told them that Sunderland had advised me that student finance had agreed this deferment to which I was told there were no notes on the systemt to reflect this and that the letter I receive stands.

I am a 3rd year student, with a massive workload right now. I am a single parent who was already struggling to live and keep the roof over our heads as it was with the amount of money I had and now they have just taken £1700 off me. I tried to speak to Sunderland LEA but they said they can not speak to me as they have no access to the system anymore. If this does not get resolved I will have to leave my course as financially I can not survive. They have advised I can appeal but this will take 3 weeks AT LEAST.

Surely if the agreement was in place with Sunderland when they took over they should honouor it? If I can prove this (which is my mission tonight/tomorrow) then surely they need to honour whats been done previously? Why should I pay the price because of the fact that who deals with my finance has been changed?
I am not disputing I owe them money- I am simply saying it was agreed it would be paid back at the end of my course. I will have to leave if I can't get this resolved and I really really do not want to do that.

Please any advice would be great thank you :-(