{"id":882974,"date":"2026-04-09T18:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/882974\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T18:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:50:15","slug":"leeds-students-among-22000-told-to-repay-mis-sold-maintenance-loans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/882974\/","title":{"rendered":"Leeds students among 22,000 told to repay \u2018mis-sold\u2019 maintenance loans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><strong>By Harry Ward<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Students at Leeds Trinity University are among thousands across England affected by problems with maintenance loan payments.<\/p>\n<p>More than 20,000 students may have received loans they were not entitled to and could now be asked to repay them, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cq593g970z7o\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a report by BBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Leeds Trinity is one of around 15 providers impacted.<\/p>\n<p>The issue centres on how some courses have been classified. The Office for Students (OfS) has previously said that courses delivered only at weekends could be considered distance learning, meaning students would not be eligible for maintenance loans.<\/p>\n<p>The Department for Education (DfE) said the problem arose where some providers incorrectly registered weekend-only courses as \u201cin-attendance\u201d, allowing students to access maintenance funding.<\/p>\n<p>It estimates around \u00a3190m in payments have been made in error this academic year.<\/p>\n<p>Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said: \u201cThis is not students\u2019 fault. Too many organisations have let their students down, through either incompetence or abuse of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She added that universities \u201cmust take immediate action to support students who will face financial difficulties as a result\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The DfE said providers are responsible for correctly registering courses and would be held to account where they fail to meet their obligations.<\/p>\n<p>In a joint statement, universities including Leeds Trinity said they were \u201cextremely concerned\u201d that maintenance payments had been abruptly blocked.<\/p>\n<p>They said they were taking legal advice to challenge the actions of the DfE and the Student Loans Company.<\/p>\n<p>The group added that supporting affected students was their \u201cprimary focus\u201d while the situation was reviewed.<\/p>\n<p>It is not yet clear how many students at Leeds Trinity have been affected.<\/p>\n<p>Maintenance loans are paid in instalments to cover living costs such as food and accommodation. Repayments normally begin once graduates are earning above a certain threshold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Harry Ward Students at Leeds Trinity University are among thousands across England affected by problems with maintenance&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,208169,393,4884,222945,209390,1860,249726,233889,16,15],"class_list":["post-882974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-leeds","tag-britain","tag-community-reporters","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-harry-ward","tag-horsforth","tag-leeds","tag-leeds-trinity","tag-trinity-university-college","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116376255260706261","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}