Student loan holders wrongly threatened with £150 fines

Unknown number of letters sent out by Student Loans Company by mistake

(Shutterstock)

Thousands of student loan holders could have been threatened with £150 fines after the Student Loans Company sent letters to them in error.

An unknown number of people wrongly received letters telling them that they’d changed jobs, and that they would need to update their details within 28 days, or face the fine.

HMRC, which collects loan repayments on behalf of SLC through the tax system, admitted that it did not know how many people had received the letters, but said that anyone whose circumstances had not changed did not need to do anything.

A spokesman said that the error had crept in during the roll-out of the new “Real Time Information” PAYE system, which is meant to ensure that the tax people pay is more responsive to changes in their employment.

“During the roll-out, a small number of employments have been ceased in error, based on information HMRC received from employers. These inaccuracies were caused by transitional issues which have been corrected.

“Unfortunately, in some cases, this information was passed on to the SLC before the correction was made, which may have resulted some incorrect letters. HMRC have been working with the SLC to try to resolve the issue.”