With most of SLC working from home, we are finding different ways to track and understand our customers' sentiment and the things they are worried about.
Our social media channels have increased in popularity and are proving an effective way of doing this and that's why we recently announced the extension of the application deadline for full-time, returning students in England and Wales until 30th June.
We process many hundreds of thousands of funding applications each summer and this year, as always, our priority is to ensure that students have their funding in place for the start of term. However, we recognise that this is not a "normal" year for anyone and that it was important to extend the deadline as far as we reasonably could.
I must stress however that it remains the case that all students should get their funding applications in as early as they can, as it's the only way to be sure of having a full allocation of funding in place for the start of term. We do everything we can to process late applications but, when we need to, gathering evidence can be complex and takes time.
Deadlines are in place for good reason and meeting them is the best possible way to ensure peace of mind, as well as of securing full funding for the new term.
None of us underestimates how challenging this year has been and I'd like to publicly thank everyone for their continuing hard work, to enable us to deliver our service to customers.
We hope the extended deadline is helpful.
We recognise that new and returning students will have questions about their student finance applications and to help them we will be hosting a Facebook Live session on Student Finance England's Facebook page on Monday 22nd June at 1pm.
