Could you be owed a student loan refund?
Mark Tovey is a finance journalist with bylines in The Guardian, The Motley Fool, and more. He digs into data and FOI-based investigations, and makes finance easier to understand.
Last updated 8th May 2026
15 min read
- Tens of thousands of people in the UK have paid more than they should on their student loans.
- Overpayments usually happen because of payroll timing issues, such as bonuses or overtime, wrong repayment plans, or deductions continuing after the loan is cleared.
- In 2023/24 alone, £23.3 million was overpaid, with most refunded but some still waiting to be returned as of the latest statistics.
If you've ever glanced at your payslip, seen a "Student Loan" deduction, and thought "hang on, didn't I already pay this off?", you're not alone.
The system has a habit of taking first and leaving you to sort out the error, like airport security rummaging through your suitcase and leaving you to pack it all back in neatly.
We dug into the latest Student Loans Company data to see how often borrowers end up overpaying, and how much money is still sitting in limbo waiting to be returned.
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What the data shows
Student Loans Company data shows the number of customers with refunds pending rose from 4,611 in 2015–16 to 36,000 in 2023–24.
The same figures show £23.3m was over-repaid through PAYE in 2023–24, of which about £21.7m had already been refunded by the time of the latest snapshot.
The SLC says the latest-year spike partly reflects timing, because borrowers who have only recently over-repaid are more likely still to be waiting for their money back.
It says these balances typically fall sharply over time – with pending refunds from 2022–23 dropping by around 65% over the following year.
Even so, the figures show tens of thousands of borrowers can end up temporarily out of pocket while refunds are still being processed.
| Financial year | Customers pending refund | Pending refund (£) |
|---|---|---|
| 2015–16 | 4,611 | 2,674,653 |
| 2016–17 | 4,654 | 2,382,674 |
| 2017–18 | 3,668 | 1,970,998 |
| 2018–19 | 3,165 | 1,887,102 |
| 2019–20 | 3,947 | 1,316,124 |
| 2020–21 | 3,133 | 724,424 |
| 2021–22 | 4,002 | 1,044,337 |
| 2022–23 | 11,812 | 1,172,448 |
| 2023–24 | 36,000 | 1,625,990 |
And while the average amount overpaid hovers between £300-£600, according to separate data obtained through Freedom of Information requests, at least ten graduates are thought to be owed £15,000, and one person is even owed a whopping £48,840.
If money has been deducted from your payslip for student loan repayments that you didn't ultimately need to pay, you may be able to get it back. The Student Loans Company can refund overpayments, although borrowers sometimes need to contact the SLC to request it.
Why student loan overpayments happen
Overpayments happen for a few different reasons, and most of them come down to timing, payroll quirks, or plain old admin errors.
1. Your pay jumps
You should only start paying back your student loan if you're earning above a specific threshold. But, if your pay briefly spikes (bonus or overtime), you can be pushed above this, triggering a deduction even if your total income across the tax year ends up below the annual threshold.
In those cases, you should be able to get that money back, because your total income for the year ultimately fell below the repayment threshold.
This is the most common reason for overpayment according to recent government stats, with around 1.07 million overpayments made in 2024/25 by people who didn't meet the minimum earnings threshold.
A quick note on variable income...
There's another version of this problem that affects people whose total annual income is above the threshold, but who have uneven earnings across the year.
Because repayments are calculated per pay period rather than annually, a high-earning month triggers a larger deduction than a true annual calculation would produce. And unlike the scenario above, HMRC and the Student Loans Company do not offer refunds in this situation, because your yearly income did clear the threshold.
It's a structural quirk of the PAYE system rather than an admin error, and there's currently no mechanism to correct it. If your income varies significantly month to month, it's worth being aware that – annoyingly – you may end up repaying slightly more over time than the headline "9% above the threshold" figure would suggest.
2. Your loan is already repaid, but deductions haven't stopped
Deductions can also continue after you have cleared the loan because information takes time to flow through the system. HM Revenue and Customs tells employers to stop once the loan is repaid, but gov.uk warns it can take around four weeks for salary deductions to stop.
To avoid this, the Student Loans Company encourages people to switch to direct debit in the final months of repayment, allowing them to collect the remaining balance more precisely and stop once the loan is fully repaid.
3. You've been put on the wrong repayment plan
The type of loan repayment plan you're on determines how much you have to repay each year. You'll be asked which plan you're on when you start a new job, so payroll knows which threshold to use and therefore when to start taking deductions and how much to take.
Different plans kick in at different income levels, so being put on the wrong one can mean you repay too much, too soon. Those same government figures indicate that almost 18,000 overpayments were made this way in 2024/25.
4. You started repaying too early
If you started uni on or after 1998 and were a full-time student, you shouldn't have started repaying your loan until the April after your studies finished, even if you earned enough to push you over the repayment threshold.
This is less common, but when it does happen, it's usually down to either you or your employer mistakenly providing the incorrect date.
How to work out if you may be due a refund
Use this quick checklist:
- Check your recent payslips for a line like "Student Loan" or "Postgraduate Loan" and note which months deductions were taken
- Add up your gross pay for the tax year (P60 is easiest) and compare it with the annual threshold for your plan. In 2025/26, that's: Plan 1 £26,065; Plan 2 £28,470; Plan 4 £32,745; Postgraduate £21,000. Thresholds change over time, so check your specific year.
- If your annual total is below the threshold but deductions were taken in some months, you may be due a "below threshold" refund – and SLC now lets eligible customers request this through their online account
- Log in to your student loan repayment account on gov.uk, confirm your repayment plan, and look for any credit balance or messages about refunds.
If you're near the end of repayment (or think you've cleared it), check whether deductions continued after your balance hit zero – that's a classic refund scenario.
How to claim a refund
The very first thing all former students who took out a loan ought to do is make sure the Student Loans Company has your up-to-date contact details and bank account information.
This is because if there's an error, the first things they'll do are either try to refund you automatically (up to £5,000) or contact you to let you know you're due a refund.
If you overpaid and haven't heard anything, gov.uk says you can request a refund – usually by signing in to your repayment account for "below threshold" cases, or contacting SLC for other situations, like if you're in the wrong plan or you started repaying too early.
Typical amounts vary: in 2023–24, refunded customers averaged £920, while the remaining pending refunds averaged £50, suggesting many unresolved balances are small.
It's worth keeping track of how much you've repaid, and remember that switching to direct debit in the final stretch can help avoid overpaying once you're close to clearing the balance.
A refund sounds good... but is it always?
To paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park fame, you might be so busy wondering whether you could get a student loan refund that you never stop to ask whether you should.
Which might sound odd. Usually, paying off a loan faster is a good thing. Less debt, less interest, job done. But student loans don't work like a normal loan – they work more like a graduate tax: you repay a set percentage of your income above a certain threshold, and after a set number of years, whatever is left is wiped.
Crucially, your monthly repayment doesn't change based on how big your balance is, it only changes based on how much you earn. So if you claim back money you overpaid, your loan balance will go back up on paper. But that doesn't mean your repayments will go up too.
For a lot of borrowers, especially those unlikely to ever clear the balance in full, reclaiming an overpayment may make little or no difference to what they repay overall. They'd still just keep paying the same slice of their income until the loan is written off.
The people who may need to think twice are higher earners who are on track to repay the whole thing. For them, keeping the balance lower can mean less interest builds up over time.
If you're not sure whether you're likely to pay off your loan in full, give this tool a try. It can only provide an estimate and should only be used for guidance, but it might give you an idea.
