A change in your household income has led to an overpayment

How this has happened

When you apply for student finance, a proportion of your Maintenance Loan and any grants (excluding Disabled Students’ Allowance) may be based on your household income. The assessment is based on your household income for the last full tax year. For example, if you’ve applied for student finance in the 2022/23 academic year, then we need household income information for tax year 2020-2021.

However, as your household income may have changed drastically since the year we’ve asked about, you may have applied for a provisional assessment to be carried out based on the estimated income for the current tax year. This is called a Current Year Income assessment .

A few months after the end of the tax year, we will contact your parent(s) or partner and ask them to complete a Financial Information Confirmation (PR2) form to confirm the actual household income. You’ll already have been paid based on the estimates they provided in the Current Year Income assessment, however we’ll reassess this and adjust your entitlement based on the actual household income.

Any amount of loan or grant paid to you in excess of this will be classed as an overpayment and will need to be repaid.

What happens next

If you have a grant or loan overpayment as a result of a reassessment, we’ll write to you. This will confirm the overpayment amount and the intention to recover this from any remaining payments you’re due to receive within that and any subsequent academic years. This means your payments in future could be less than you were expecting.

Alternatively, you can contact us on the number provided in the letter to make arrangements to repay this directly.

Overpayments which are not recovered while you’re studying will remain overdue. You’ll be required to repay any outstanding amount when you finish your course. We understand you may not be able to repay in a lump sum, so we’ll consider other reasonable repayment proposals.

You will also be sent a new Notification of Entitlement letter after you’ve been reassessed. This will show your reduced entitlement.

Further information

There can be many reasons why an overpayment has happened. More detailed information based on your specific situation can be found on our other pages:

• Loan and grant overpayments
• A change in your circumstances has led to an overpayment
• Your Childcare Grant entitlement has reduced
• Suspending and withdrawing from your course

If you’re struggling financially because you’ve been overpaid and your student finance has been reduced, find out what help may be available.