Help! Student finance won't fund 1st year tuition fee due to foundation year.

Hello everyone, needing some advice!
I did a foundation year in applied sciences in 2019/2020. I'm sure you all remember 2020 so I won't bore you with the reasons I was exhausted at the end of it and decided to defer my studies. Then life got in the way to my returning (I'm a mature student with children) but this year I reapplied, but for a guidance and counselling degree instead of science.
I wasn't expecting any problems with student finance as I thought you could get 4 years plus a gift year but they've refused to pay my tuition fees my first year due to the foundation year, which to my understanding isn't even part of an undergraduate degree.
There is some further complications. They are saying I've used 2 years of studying, and that's because my SF account says they made a payment to me in December 2020. Which they didn't and I can provide bank statements to prove it!
Also, although I did defer, I didn't ever enroll on the 1st undergraduate year, so I'm confused as why SF would be making a payment in late December anyway?
The university I was studying at did have a major cyber attack in sept 2020 that shut down their key operational systems for weeks and I had difficulty getting them to confirm the deferral. I'm wondering if this caused a delay in info supplied to SF because in my SF inbox there is an email stating an emergency stop on payments in November 2020 due to not attending! No mention of deferral.
It's all very confusing and I don't really know where to start appealing this or if it's even worth appealing?
Thanks in advance for your advice!

Hi Graeme,
yes it does as I applied for SF in preparation to do the Biology degree but didn't enroll on the course, instead I deferred.
Do you know if a foundation year is usually classed as first year study? I've tried researching online but have not found anything definitive.
Thank you for replying,
Lisa.