How to Claim a Student Loan Refund from the Student Loans Company (2026/27)

This guide is general information, not advice.

This guide is for employees whose student loan repayments come out of their pay under PAYE and who think some of that money should come back. That includes people whose pay is uneven across the year, people whose deductions started before they were due, people whose employer used the wrong plan type, and people whose employer kept deducting after the loan was cleared.

By the end you will know which of GOV.UK’s four refund grounds you fall under, which route to use for each (online account or SLC’s contact service), what to have in hand, and what the source says about timing.

Before you start

Have these ready:

• Your customer reference number (CRN). SLC asks for it on the phone and on any letter, per the SLC contact page.
• Your online account login. The student loan repayment account needs your CRN or email address, your password and your secret answer. If you have forgotten them, they can be reset using the email address you applied with.
• Payslips and your P60 for the year in question. GOV.UK’s repayment overview says to keep both because “you’ll need them if you want to get a refund”. Your employer must give you a P60 by 31 May if you were employed on 5 April.
• Your plan type. You can check it in the online account and download an “active plan type letter” from there, per Which repayment plan you’re on.
• Your bank details, checked. SLC’s contact page says to confirm the bank details in your online account are correct before you request a refund.

Step-by-step

1. Work out which refund ground applies

GOV.UK’s Getting a refund page lists exactly four grounds:

1. You have paid more than the total amount you owe. When the loan is cleared, HMRC tells your employer to stop deductions, and “it can take around 4 weeks for salary deductions to stop”, so the last month or two can overshoot.
2. Your annual income was below the threshold. Your employer deducts against a monthly or weekly figure, so a single high-pay month triggers a deduction even if your income for the whole tax year (6 April to 5 April) never reaches the annual threshold. The worked example below shows the mechanism.
3. You started making repayments before you needed to. GOV.UK’s When you start repaying page says the earliest you start is the April after you leave your course. A deduction taken before that date is refundable.
4. Your employer had you on the wrong plan. GOV.UK says you can get a refund “if you’re on Plan 2 or Plan 4 but your employer had you on another plan”.

The same page rules out one thing in a sentence: “You cannot get a refund for extra repayments.” Voluntary top-ups stay paid.

2. Check your balance and deductions in your online account

Sign in to the repayment account. GOV.UK lists what it shows: your balance, how much you have repaid, the interest applied so far, which plan you are on, and the letters and emails SLC has sent you. Your annual statement, which shows repayments and interest for the year, is normally available there by the end of August according to How much you repay.

Compare the repayments SLC holds against the student loan line on your payslips and P60. If the employer deducted it, it should appear on both.

3. Request the refund by the right route

GOV.UK splits the request into two routes:

• Annual income below the threshold for the previous tax year: sign in to your repayment account and ask for the refund there. The account’s feature list includes “ask for a refund if your annual income was below the threshold for the previous tax year”.
• Any other reason (overpaid in full, deductions before your start date, wrong plan): contact the Student Loans Company with your CRN. SLC’s contact page gives webchat inside the online account (Monday to Friday, 8am to 7pm) and a phone line: 0300 100 0611 for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, 0300 100 0370 for Wales, and +44 141 243 3660 from outside the UK, all Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. The postal address is Student Loans Company, 10 Clyde Place, Glasgow, G5 8DF.

If you are on more than one of Plan 1, Plan 2 and Plan 4, GOV.UK says you can only get a below-threshold refund if your income was under the lowest of your thresholds. Its own example: someone on Plan 1 and Plan 2 qualifies only if their income was under the Plan 1 figure of £26,900.

4. Fix the cause so it does not recur

• Wrong plan: download the active plan type letter from your online account and show it to your employer so payroll can correct the plan, per Which repayment plan you’re on.
• Nearly paid off: GOV.UK’s How to repay page says that if you have nearly repaid, you “may be able to make your final repayments by Direct Debit instead of from your salary”, and that SLC “will contact you in the final year of your loan repayments to let you know how to set up a Direct Debit”. That contact only reaches you if your details in the online account are current.

Deadlines and what happens next

• Below-threshold refunds wait for the tax year to end. GOV.UK: “You will not get a refund for any repayments until after SLC have confirmed your annual income with HMRC. This will not happen until after the end of the tax year. You can only ask for a refund for tax years that have ended.” For 2026/27 that means from 6 April 2027 at the earliest.
• Earlier years use that year’s threshold. SLC publishes previous annual repayment thresholds (last updated 6 April 2026); the 2025/26 Plan 2 figure, for example, was £28,470, not this year’s £29,385.
• Overpayment on a cleared loan: SLC “will try to contact you to tell you how to get a refund” or “refund you automatically”, in which case it shows in your bank account as ‘SLC Receipts’. If you have overpaid and heard nothing, ask.
• Stopping deductions: around 4 weeks after HMRC tells your employer, per GOV.UK. It publishes no timescale for paying the refund itself; if SLC quotes one when you call, that is SLC’s figure, not the guidance.

Common mistakes

• Asking before 6 April. A below-threshold request for the current year cannot be actioned; SLC needs HMRC’s confirmed annual figure first.
• Treating the annual threshold as a monthly one. Deductions in a bonus month are not an employer error; the refund is the mechanism for correcting them after the year ends.
• Counting voluntary repayments as refundable. They are not, and GOV.UK also warns you “might not benefit” from extra repayments if the loan will be written off at the end of its term.
• Not keeping payslips and the P60. GOV.UK tells you to keep them precisely for this purpose; the online account shows SLC’s figures, not your employer’s.
• Letting SLC’s contact details go stale. The Direct Debit offer in the final year and the overpayment contact both depend on SLC being able to reach you.

Worked example

Figures are the 2026/27 Plan 2 thresholds from How much you repay: £29,385 a year, £2,448 a month, with repayments at 9% of income above the threshold. Income means gross pay including bonuses and overtime.

You earn £2,200 a month, which is under the monthly threshold, so for eleven months no repayment is taken. In one month you receive a £2,500 bonus, so that month’s gross pay is £4,700.

• Bonus month: £4,700 minus £2,448 = £2,252. 9% of £2,252 = £202.68. GOV.UK’s own examples show payroll deducting the whole-pound figure, so £202 is taken.
• The other eleven months: £2,200 is below £2,448, so nothing is taken.
• Annual income: £24,200 (eleven months at £2,200) plus £4,700 = £28,900.

£28,900 is below the £29,385 annual threshold, so under GOV.UK’s rule the £202 deducted is refundable. You request it through your online account after 5 April 2027, once SLC has HMRC’s figure for the year. Had the bonus been £3,000 instead, annual income would be £29,400, just over the threshold, and no refund would be due even though the deduction only landed in one month.

Related reading

• Student loan plans explained - which plan you are on, the 2026/27 thresholds and interest for each.
• Student loan repayment calculator - see your monthly deduction at a given salary and plan.
• Student loan repayment strategy 2026/27 - whether overpaying makes sense, plan by plan.