Lack of loans may spell disaster as 'problem' files are deleted from the system. Image: UCLAN.ac.uk

It’s taken 87 minutes on hold, three phone arguments with some very rude and unhelpful Scottish people at Student Finance England (ironic isn’t it) and I still do not have my loan. Turns out my local council, who used to sort out the loans, decided “problem” applications would be deleted from the system and all knowledge of the student ever applying would be denied during the change over to the new company.

Of course, mine was considered a “problem”, resulting in me having to spend countless hours listening to SFE’s very poor choice in hold music, namely Liberty-X’s “Just a Little”, on repeat, on a very bad connection.

After being shunted from department to department, supervisor to manager and back to someone on the “help” desk, I was told I would have to fully re-apply and that it would take 6-8 weeks for my application to be processed.

This was on a Friday. My Landlord was collecting my first term’s rent on Monday, resulting in the most girly and uncharacteristic hissy fit cum nervous and mental breakdown in history.

I can literally say my blood, sweat and tears have gone into trying to get my student loan this year and, comforted only slightly after reading that it wasn’t just me that hadn’t received their loan on time, and that around 170,000 other students-mainly first years- had also been stranded by the mass-changeover that has taken place.

Should such a big change have happened on such a large scale? I feel it would have maybe benefited everybody if they had been made a year at a time, starting with just new applicants this year, leaving the other years to deal with their local council’s attempts at sorting their finances out.

I am not trying to criticise SFE, I’m sure any other company trying to take on the sheer amount of student finance applicants the first time would encounter the exact same problems; it’s just left a hell of a lot of students up a certain creek without a certain paddle.

Luckily for me, my landlord was very understanding as she had had more tenants with exactly the same problems, but some people may not have been granted the same luxury. I am sure somewhere, some may not have been so nice and demanded the money or evicted their tenants.

Luckily my Knight in shining armor arrived in the nick of time in the form of my 70-something Grandmother, who gladly loaned me the rent money until I do get my loan. Whenever that may be.

This post is tagged Ralph Seymour-Jackson, SFE, Student finance, student loans