Student Finance England Issues

Hi
I helped my son fill in his SFE application in April. The course hadn't been put on the system at that point, but as soon as it was we changed it. SFE also sent a letter to say it needed updating, but that was before we changed it. Since then it had green ticks and said you've done everything and had application processing. I assumed that it meant that everything was fine since we'd had no further communication with them.
Get to yesterday, when my son started his course and when his mates had received their maintenance loans and he hadn't he called me to get me to find out what had happened. After going through the chat function, they said the course needed updating and his application was on hold. We did that and then I phoned the complaints line to find out what was now going to happen. They said they had sent a message to the uni via the SFE system that they share to ask for course confirmation in June, but hadn't had a response, so had just left it instead of contacting my son. She then said it could be 31 working days before he receives his money, which is nearly the end of October and not acceptable.
My next step was to phone the uni to find out why they hadn't responded to the course confirmation, to which they said the SFE system didn't have the ability to send or receive messages and they had not received any emails.
So it seems like his application basically hasn't started. Managed to get it approved this morning and he has been registered as attending by uni, but now they're saying that there's got to be a NI check (they've had his NI number since April) and then no one will tell me how long after that before he will actually receive his money.
My biggest issue is that the SFE system never said his account was on hold and the way it looked on the screen with green ticks that nothing needed to be done and the lack of actual communication from SFE, because if we had known it would have been done months ago.
I know there's not much I can actually do now, apart from push for a faster payment to make his 1st payment rather than wait another almost another week for it.
I am going to complain by email (because the complaints phone line doesn't actually deal with complaints it's just quoting policy), but just wanted to let people know to chase it even if it says application processing.

@Angela SFE
@Clare SFE

How do is final year maintenance calculated please?

SFE refused to tell me tonight as they say it is not their job to explain this, they said I can't communicate with an assessor and no line manager was available. I don't have time to complain.

Online digging produces nothing.

I just want a rough idea how it is calculated otherwise how do I know it's correct.

Hoping for an answer from anyone from SFE.

SFE reps only respond to threads in the Ask SFE forum and I see that you have already made a post asking the same question on there.
FWIW - student finance support ends when your course ends in your final year so, unlike previous years, it doesn't cover the summer holidays.