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Having battled with Student Finance for the previous 4 years with my son and step-daughter going to university - and at times wanting to kill either them or myself - I have now been in contact with them again as my daughter starts at university, so I thought I'd share a few words of advice, as this year, I've finally cracked the system 😆
1. Student finance work on the previous years figures (so for this years application, I'm using 2009-2010 P60) - so the yeart before your son/daughter starts at university, start a folder and put in P60s for you and your wife/partner, plus any records of other income you may have. If you file your tax return on line, print this out and put it in the folder as well.
2. Make sure your child applies for student finance as early as possible - usually around April.
3. You will all be issued with separate accounts and reference numbers - put these in your file
4. Send the PFF2 forms off to Student FInance as soon as you have the reference numbers - the forms can be downloaded from the website.
5. Assuming you, your wife and your child have nothing to hide from each other, ring student finance, make sure your accounts are linked to your daughter, and get authority to speak to student finance on your child’s behalf. Your child will need to be there with you to make this call, as he/she has to give this authority and will need to prove his/her identity by password and secret answer. Once you have this authority, life becomes much, much easier as there’s no juggling trying to co-ordinate the required information, you can make the call each time and deal with everything in one go. It also helps if you have the passwords for both your partner and child so you can go online on their behalf also, just in case.
6. It’s useful to know what information is recorded online, but do everything else by phone where possible - you may have to hold for 10 minutes or so to get through (learn the menu options so you don't have to listen to the messages, you can enter the options to skip straight through) but having someone at the other end who can check everything helps immensely.
7. Have patience – it usually takes up to 10 days for something to happen (from the point they ‘create a task’) – this is why applying early makes a difference.
Great advice - I think!!
My eldest will go to uni in four years time so do I need to phone them now to organise???
Looking forward to those fees
Yep, I'd start applying now 😆
Even after all this careful planning, still not got it sorted out, and being given incorrect information by the student finance has delayed matters. So one more bit of advice, before you apply, if you have any income whatsoever other than employed income, ring the Inland Revenue and ask for a statement of income - completely free, and takes a couple of weeks to come through, but will help immensely.
I would always recommend that you apply ASAP, Post graduate is less time consuming and the turn around time is much quicker (I assume it's due to less post grad students). The Student Finance reps have always been very helpful for me and I have always had the student finance application go through fine, saying that I have contacted them many times and I have also used guidance application forms from the university themselves. I also found that using the correct student finance number works best and this site has been a God send to me!! http://studentfinancenumber.co.uk providing different numbers for different application types and departments removes hassle straight away!
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