Hello
I rang student finance today and what an awful experience! I even rang back and spoke to someone else who was just as confusing as the first person. I am struggling to work out what financial support and loans I will be able to access next year.
Anyway, hopefully someone can answer these questions for me..
I am 23 years old and if all goes well will be starting a university course in Sept 2016. I still live at home with household income excluding mine at around £14k. I have worked full time since leaving education at 17 so will be classed as an independent student.
They have told me I will need to provide three year's worth of P60s and I will then be income assessed. They told me I could send in P60s from any year. I didn't understand this as surely it would be your last three years if this is how it worked? I can't see anything on the internet describing a process where they assess your income for either any previous three years or the last three years.
What I am particularly stressed about is it seems you are not assessed on the current tax year but the one before the current.
IE, for 2016 entry they will look at financial year 14-15 for which I earned around £32k which is over the maximum allowed to receive any financial support. The year before I earned significantly more than this so am worried about sending in the last three years worth of P60s.
For the current tax year, I expect to earn in the region of £15k due to being unable to work full time from next month until April. Can anyone tell me what the limit is to receive the maximum amount of maintenance loans as I could keep my income under that if it makes a difference...?
Is there any other single students who earned a reasonable salary and then dropped to nothing once at university? Can you let me know how your application was assessed? I know there will be no grants next year but my understanding of the main change is that grants will be converted to loans and am therefore assuming not much else will change significantly.
In a nut shell, can anyone tell me I am mistaken in thinking there is a chance I won't qualify for any maintenance support?
Thanks