Dependants' Grants Finalisation process

The Dependants’ Grant finalisation process is carried out at the end of the academic year to make sure that students received the correct Dependants’ Grant funding.

This process affects students who are all of the following:

• started their course before academic year 2013 to 2014
• received one or more of our Dependants’ Grants
• have a partner, spouse or other adult dependant

The process

At the point of application

Student’s applying for student finance and Dependants’ Grants for academic year 2013 to 2014 or earlier are asked to tell us about their financial commitments.

We want to know about any financial commitments that the student was paying before their course start date and that they’ll continue to pay during the academic year.

Near the end of the academic year

We’ll send all affected students a letter with an enclosed form which they must complete and return to us as soon as possible before the provided deadline.

Students will be asked to provide photocopied evidence of every payment for each financial commitment made during their academic year.

The form will explain what types of evidence can be sent for each financial commitment.

When we receive the student’s completed form

We’ll review the information and evidence the student has provided, if anything is missing we may write to the student again to request this.

Once we have everything we need we’ll check that the student received the correct amount of funding. This can mean that the student’s entitlement will may go up, go down or stay the same.

It’s quite common for the estimates and confirmed amounts to differ so we’ll write to the student to confirm any changes to their entitlement and any actions they need to take as a result.

If the student doesn’t return their completed form

We’ll send a follow up text about 2 weeks after the first letter. We’ll send a reminder letter 6 weeks later if we’ve still had no response.

The student will then have a further 4 weeks to return their completed form. If no form is received before this time their entitlement for student finance will be reassessed based on their household income and no other financial commitments.

This could mean that the student’s entitlement for a grant is reduced or even removed.

Any amounts paid to the student over their new entitlement would be considered an overpayment. Overpayments become immediately due for repayment and could affect future funding.

We will write to the student to confirm their new entitlement following the reassessment and any actions they would need to take.

Students should be advised to return their completed form with all required evidence as soon as they can in order to avoid this situation.