Official Statistics

Student loan repayments via PAYE eligible for refund - Tax year 2023/24 (6 April 2023 - 5 April 2024)

Published 31 October 2024

1. Introduction and context

The Student Loans Company (SLC) publishes official statistics about the financial support received by students / learners and on student loan balances and the rate of repayments. Given the level of public interest, we are adding an ad hoc publication focusing on repayment scenarios to our statistics collection.

There are four scenarios where customers can become eligible to request a refund of over-repayments of their student loan, when the repayments have been made correctly, in accordance with the Government’s student loan repayment regulations. This is a result of the Income Contingent Repayment model where repayments are made based upon what customers earn within a pay period.

The scenarios include:

• Below threshold repayments – individual periodic repayments correctly made based upon a customer’s earnings in a particular pay period, however the total amount repaid at the end of the year is below the annual repayment threshold set for the individual plan type (refer to Figure 2a)
• Repayments allocated to the incorrect repayment plan by the employer (refer to Figure 3)
• Repayments taken by the employer before the Statutory Repayment Due Date (SRDD). The SRDD is the point at which the customer becomes liable to start to repay their loan (refer to Figure 4)
• Repayments made after the loan-balance has been fully repaid (refer to Figure 5 )

This publication provides the number of customers who have made repayments under the four scenarios listed above and the total amount over-repaid.

If eligible, the Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) regulations make provision for a customer to request a refund.

The table below outlines the total number of refunds across all four scenarios (outlined above) that customers have received in the 2023/24 tax year and 2024/25 tax year to date.

Figure 1: Total amount refunded, number of customers refunded, and average refunded across all four scenarios – Tax year 2023/24 and tax year 2024/25 to date (all domiciles)

	Total refunded (£m)	No. of customers refunded	Average refunded
Tax year 2024/25 to date	£78.9	310,800 *	£250
Tax year 2023/24	£61.1	216,300 *	£280

*Customers could have multiple refunds. The ‘No. of customers refunded’ column could therefore include duplicate customers. Please note: Refunds made in the above tax years could relate to an over-repayment made in any previous tax year.

New online service for below threshold repayments - In response to customer feedback, SLC has introduced a new, simpler, digital service to allow customers to request a ‘below threshold refund’ using their online account. The new online service has been available to below threshold refund customers since May 2024. SLC has contacted every customer eligible for a refund, a total of 653,000 customers. Of those contacted, 75% have opened the communication, with 213,000 customers requesting a refund online to date.

Customers may opt not to request a refund as their intention may be to repay the loan in full – any refund given for repayments made in any refund scenarios, excluding a loan balance that is fully repaid, will increase the loan balance and associated interest accrued.    

SLC will continue to receive a small amount of annual earnings information from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) throughout the tax year. Any customer that becomes eligible for a below threshold refund will be contacted. SLC intends to routinely contact all customers eligible for a refund on an annual basis.  

SLC cannot provide financial advice or guidance to customers. A customer’s personal and financial circumstances, and how these may change over time, should be considered before requesting a refund.

The data:

• The data tables below cover tax year 2023/24 (6 April 2023 to 5 April 2024).
• The data represents those who have made a repayment through the UK tax system via Pay-As-You-Earn (“PAYE”) only.
• Customers with a Self-Assessment repayment within the financial year are not included as this data is received from HMRC at a later point in the year, which would delay this publication.
• For context, in tax year 2022/23, 91% of customers repaid via PAYE and 7% of customers repaid via Self-Assessment (Self-Assessment figures for tax year 2023/24 are not available until March 2025).
• The data shows a total count for UK domiciled students funded by Student Finance England (SFE), Student Finance Wales (SFW), Student Finance Northern Ireland (SFNI) and the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS).

This data includes all repayment plan types:

• Plan 1 - Pre- academic year 2012/13 loans plus all Northern Ireland.
• Plan 2 – Post -academic year 2012/13 loans (pre-Plan 4 and 5) England and Wales only.
• Plan 3 - All postgraduate loans (Master’s and Doctoral) England and Wales only.
• Plan 4 - All Scotland loans.
• Plan 5 - Post-academic year 2023/24 loans (England only).

For more information on repayment plan types, please refer to GOV.UK.

2. What can you use these statistics for?

These statistics can be used as a reference to the number of SLC customers who made repayments in tax year 2023/24 via PAYE and the amount repaid, who may be entitled to a refund under one of the four scenarios noted.

The data used in this publication is sourced from Student Loans Company’s ‘Customer Ledger Account Servicing System’ (CLASS). This system only holds information on customers who have received funding from SLC. Due to this, these statistics cannot be used to analyse trends or to draw conclusions regarding the full UK education funding landscape.

3. Caveats and data definitions

• The data excludes Mortgage Style loan balances and customers who have made a repayment using the Self-Assessment tax regime within the financial year.
• Due to the way in which the repayments system works through the UK PAYE system, data is presented by tax year. This differs from our other publications (where financial or academic year are used) and therefore any comparisons should be made with caution.

4. Results

4.1 Below Threshold Repayments

Under the Government’s loan repayment regulations, the annual repayment thresholds are divided by the number of pay periods in the year (i.e. by 12 for monthly paid employees, and by 52 for weekly paid employees) to provide a threshold for each pay period. Customers will make repayments in any particular pay period if their earnings are above the relevant pay period threshold (e.g. because of overtime worked or bonuses earned).

However, if their total earnings for the year are below the annual threshold then The Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations make provision for the customer to request SLC a refund. SLC is only able to establish eligibility for a refund following receipt of the total end of tax year annual earnings information from HMRC. This information is provided to SLC by HMRC in the months following the end of the tax year.

It is important to note that the in-year deductions have been correctly taken by employers based on the customer’s earnings in the relevant pay period.

In tax year 2023/24, SLC refunded £26.5 million to 102,200 customers who were eligible for a below threshold refund. These repayments were taken correctly in the pay period, but over the full year their total earnings did not exceed the overall annual repayment threshold.

Over the last year, SLC has made significant improvements to the below threshold refund process. This includes proactively contacting customers if they are eligible for a below threshold refund for the previous tax year and inviting them to use a new online service to request a refund should they wish to do so. At end-September 2024, SLC has refunded £61.6 million to 248,600 customers with an average refund value being £250. 

SLC has emailed 653,000 customers who are eligible for a below threshold refund in the 2023/24 tax year. In the first six months of the service customer engagement has surpassed expectations. On average, the communication has a 75% open rate and a third of customers, who have received the communication, have decided to request a refund.

Although SLC has received most of the annual earnings information from HMRC, a small proportion of data will continue to be received each month throughout the tax year and any customers who becomes eligible for a below threshold refund will be contacted.

There are also some customer exclusions in this process, including:

• Customers who had already received a refund
  • Before the communication was issued, 52,000 eligible customers had already requested a refund, so were not included.
• Customers nearing the end of their loan term or have fully repaid their loan
  • Any money repaid via PAYE will reduce the customer’s loan balance, therefore any refund given for repayments made in this refund scenario will result in the customers balance increasing.
  • Encouraging these customers to request a refund in this scenario will increase their loan balance, extending their payment term.
• Incorrect or missing contact details
  • It is important that customers keep their contact details up to date in their online account, so they don’t miss out on important updates about any refund entitlement.

Figure 2a: Total number of customers who have correctly made an in-year repayment via PAYE but ultimately earned less than the annual repayment threshold at end of the tax year, by repayment plan-type – Tax year 2023/24 (all domiciles)

Coverage: Students domiciled in the UK and EU
Effective date: 30 September 2024

Plan Type	No. of customers who have made a repayment	Total repayments made
1	276,398	£45,187,121
2	643,873	£83,722,629
3	54,344	£6,540,446
4	89,596	£10,627,966
5	-	-
Total	*	£146,078,162

Note:

*Customers can have multiple loans, across multiple plan types. The ‘No. of customers’ column will therefore include duplicate customers.
Domiciles included: England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and EU (outside UK).

For tax year 2023/24 the repayment thresholds are:

Figure 2b: Income thresholds, by repayment plan type - Tax year 2023/24

Income thresholds
Plan Type	Weekly	Fortnightly	4-weekly	Monthly	Annual
1	£423	£846	£1,693	£1,834	£22,015
2	£524	£1,049	£2,099	£2,274	£27,295
3	£403	£807	£1,615	£1,750	£21,000
4	£531	£1,063	£2,127	£2,305	£27,660
5	£480	£961	£1,923	£2,083	£25,000

If a customer is repaying a Plan 1, Plan 2 and Plan 4 loan, they can only get a refund if their income was less than the Plan 1 repayment threshold. If a customer has a Plan 1 and/or Plan 2 and a Plan 3 loan, they may be eligible for a below threshold refund for one but not the other, dependent on their earnings.

Customers earning below the repayment threshold at the end of the tax year should visit their account via the Online Repayment Service (ORS), to access repayment information.

4.2 Incorrect Plan Type

When a customer begins new employment, their employer may ask them to complete the HMRC Employer Checklist, which asks for information on which plan type loan they have, when they began study, when they entered repayment and if their loan has already been repaid. However, this checklist is not mandatory, meaning some employers may use a different method to obtain information from the customer on what plan type their loan(s) should be allocated to. 

The employer PAYE guidance advises employers to default to deduct against Plan 1 if a customer does not know which plan type, they are on when they commence employment. If an employer has the customer on an incorrect plan type, the customer can download an Active Plan Type letter from within their online account. This can be shared with their employer to avoid deductions being taken against the wrong plan type. There is also guidance in their online account which makes it clear to the customer which plan type they are on.

Employer compliance is a matter for HMRC. It has recently introduced prompts to employers’ payroll software to address errors in the handling of student loan deductions.

As noted, there are currently five repayment plan types with a range of different repayment thresholds. SLC notify HMRC of the correct Plan Type and HMRC instruct the employer via payroll software. Where HMRC systems identify a Wrong Plan type, a notification will be issued to the employer’s payroll software asking it to be corrected from the next available pay date.

The Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations make provision for a scenario where a customer has a higher repayment taken due to the incorrect Plan Type being held on employer payroll software, enabling the customer to request a refund from SLC.

Figure 3: Total number of customers who made a repayment via PAYE as a result of their employer allocating to an incorrect plan type, by repayment plan type – Tax year 2023/24 (all domiciles)

Coverage: Students domiciled in UK and EU
Effective date: 30 September 2024

Plan Type Correct	Plan Type Incorrectly allocated to	No. of customers who have made a repayment	Total repayments made
2	1	17,441	£7,063,747
4	2	2,431	£580,666
4	1	703	£269,415
Total		*	£7,913,828

Note:

*Customers can have multiple loans, across multiple plan types. The ‘No. of customers’ column will therefore include duplicate customers.
Domiciles included: England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and EU (outside UK).

For more information on repayment plan types please refer to GOV.UK. For more information on refunds please also refer to GOV.UK.

4.3 Early repayment

Under the Government’s regulations, the Statutory Repayment Due Date (SRDD) is the point at which a customer becomes liable to begin repaying their loan. This is usually the April after graduating or can be at another point during the tax year, if a customer leaves their course earlier and gains employment. After the SRDD, customers are required to make repayments if their income is above the relevant threshold. Although most employers correctly determine whether a customer is eligible to repay through the questions asked in their new starter checklist, some employers may incorrectly commence deductions on seeing an employee has a student loan.

The Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations enable the customer to request a refund from SLC.

Figure 4: Total number of customers who made a repayment via PAYE prior to their SRDD, and total amount repaid, by repayment plan type – Tax year 2023/24 (all domiciles)

Coverage: Students domiciled in UK and EU
Effective date: 30 September 2024

Plan Type	No. of customers who have made a repayment	Total repayments made
1	1,122	£255,434
2	28,720	£4,822,382
3	6,137	£1,502,798
4	1,738	£326,279
5	5	£397
Total	*	£ 6,907,290

Note:

*Customers can have multiple loans, across multiple plan types. The ‘No. of customers’ column will therefore include duplicate customers.
Domiciles included: England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and EU (outside UK).

The earliest a customer starts repaying their loan(s) will be:

• the April after they leave their course
• the April four years after the course started if they studied part-time or a Postgraduate Doctoral course and the course is longer than four-years
• April 2026 if on the latest, new repayment Plan 5

As customers leave study, SLC start communicating what to expect from their repayment experience in advance of deductions commencing. SLC sends three communications to customers as they approach this milestone:

• After graduation – this is the first communication that customers receive after leaving their course and is a general introduction on what to expect.
• Winter – the Exiting Study Email begins to expand on the detail of the topics of the previous email and provides more information.
• Prior to April – this acts as a reminder of the information the customer has already received in the previous two emails and highlights again that, if the customer is earning over the relevant plan type threshold, payments will begin and be taken automatically via PAYE system that is operated by their employer.

SLC will then ask HMRC to issue a ‘Start Notice” to the customer’s employer when the customer is due to start making repayments. SLC does not ask HMRC to arrange a Start Notice before then. HMRC then prompts the employer to commence deductions once the SRDD is reached, subject to the relevant plan type earnings threshold being met.

Repayments made by customers through salary deductions before the SRDD typically occur for reasons outside of SLC’s control, including:

• an employer making an early deduction in error
• a new employee P45 shows student loan deductions should continue
• a new employee advises the employer that they are repaying a student loan
• a new employee fills in a starter checklist showing they have a student loan

It should also be noted that customers may also have studied more than one course and may have multiple SRDDs.

Customers can view their deductions by visiting their online account or by checking their payslips/P60s.

If any repayments are taken before a customer’s SRDD, the customer should contact HMRC, if the repayment is taken before April, when they are due to enter repayment. Some customers who have over-repaid as a result of this may decide to leave the over-repayments and not seek a refund, as ultimately these repayments reduce their loan balance and the interest value.

Since April 2019, HMRC has sent SLC student loan repayment information as reported by employers on a weekly basis. For customers who are paid monthly, that means the information will be transferred once a month. This means that via their online account, customers can now see in close to real time if an employer has made a deduction before their SRDD.

For more information about when customers will start to repay their student loan, please refer to GOV.UK.

4.4 Over repayment

Under the Government’s regulations, SLC is only permitted to stop deductions upon full repayment, death, permanent disability resulting in the customer being unfit to work or when the full loan term is reached.

When deductions are due to stop, SLC will alert HMRC systems and a notification is sent to the employer, through the payroll software, to stop deductions from the next available pay date. As SLC cannot cease deductions until the customer has fully repaid, all customers will over-repay unless they elect to sign-up to the SLC direct debit scheme or settle their outstanding balance in the final stages of loan repayment. The scale of over-repayment will depend on the timing of this process in relation to employer pay dates and the timeliness of the employer applying the request to stop deductions.

The Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations make provision for this scenario and enable the customer to request a refund from SLC.

Figure 5: Total number of customers who made a repayment via PAYE after their loan balance was fully repaid – all domiciles.

Coverage: Students domiciled in UK and EU
Effective date: 30 September 2024

No. of customers who have made a repayment	Total repayments made
59,251	£23,134,738

Note: Domiciles included: England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and EU (outside UK).

Over-repayments are entirely avoidable.

As customers enter the final stages of repayment, they will receive a communication from SLC inviting them to sign up to the direct debit scheme. This is easy to do and is the only way to avoid repaying too much, as the regulations do not allow deductions to stop until the loan has been repaid in full.

If a customer doesn’t keep their contact details up to date, SLC will be unable to send this communication therefore, it’s imperative that customers keep their contact details up to date in accordance with the terms and conditions of their loan.

Once the customer has repaid the set amount over the agreed time via direct debit, the balance will be cleared, and an over-repayment avoided.

If a customer doesn’t join the scheme, continues to have deductions taken from PAYE, and overpays and has a credit balance, SLC will instruct HMRC to issue a Stop Notice to the employer to advise them to stop taking deductions.

SLC automatically refunds over-repayments directly into customer bank accounts. If an automatic refund can’t be made, SLC will contact the customer to notify them they are due a refund.  Customers must keep their contact details up to date (as required under the terms and conditions of their loans). If customers fail to do this, there can be a delay in refunds being issued.

In tax year 2023/24, SLC refunded £31.4 million to 79,900 customers who were eligible for an over repayment refund. By the end of September 2024, SLC has refunded £15.7 million to 58,400 customers within the 2024/25 tax year.

5. Additional information

5.1 General information about over-repayments

Student loan over-repayments occur due to the nature of the Income Contingent Repayment (“ICR”) (post-1998) student loan repayment scheme, where repayments are made through the UK tax system via Pay-As-You-Earn (“PAYE”). Up until April 2019, SLC received student loan repayment information annually from HMRC, and the result of this process means that borrowers nearing the end of their repayments would over-repay unless they have signed up for the direct debit scheme referred to above.

SLC launched the Online Repayment Service (“ORS”) in July 2020, which is designed to enable customers to better manage the end of their repayment journey. Customers can access ORS within the customer account. Through ORS, customers can update their contact details and have greater visibility of the final stages of their loan repayment. This enables them to make the decision to join the direct debit scheme at the right time. Customers can see whether they have over-repaid/are in credit. Further information on claiming a refund can be found here.

5.2 Definitions

Repayment cohort	A customer is placed in a single repayment cohort. In some circumstances the repayment cohort may change i.e. withdrawal from course of study. The repayment cohort is based on the year of the earliest Statutory Repayment Due Date (SRDD). See definition of SRDD below.
Repayment plan	The ICR Loan scheme has been separated into different repayment arrangements called Repayment Plan 1, 2,3 and 5. They differ in the earnings threshold used to trigger repayment and the interest rate applied to outstanding balances. Please refer to Income Contingent Student Loan repayment plans & interest rates and calculations on GOV.UK.
Statutory Repayment Due Date (SRDD)	The point a customer becomes liable to begin repaying a loan, normally the April after graduating or otherwise leaving their course. After the SRDD customers are required to make repayments if their income is above the threshold.

5.3 Data sources

This publication uses data from SLC’s administrative systems. For details of the administrative data sources used in our publications refer to the Statement of administrative sources.

5.4 Data quality

SLC has published the Quality Guidelines that it follows. As per those guidelines a Quality Plan is produced for each publication. The Quality Plan stipulates two stages of Quality Assurance. Data is extracted from the administrative systems then reviewed using a standard Quality Assurance checklist. The statistical tables created using that data are quality assured using the Statistical Quality guidelines. Please refer to our Quality guidelines for further information.

5.5 Related statistics publications

SLC publish statistics on student loans and repayments for higher and further education for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. These are published as part of the series Student loans for higher and further education. The latest release of this series covers financial years up to and including 2023-24, published on 20 June 2024. Please note that the effective dates used / time-period covered in the ‘Student loans for higher and further education’ publication series differs from this publication and therefore any comparisons should be made with caution.

5.6 Contact details

• Issued by: The Student Loans Company, 10 Clyde Place, Buchanan Wharf, Glasgow, G5 8AQ
• Press Office: press_office@slc.co.uk
• Lead Official for Statistics: enterprise_data_analytics@slc.co.uk
• Online: Click here to see our statistics page