Student loans are costly enough but new figures given to MPs show that over 20,000 graduates were overcharged on their student loan repayments last year.

The Student Loans Company [SLC] is apparently still deducting payments from student’s salaries after having paid back the full amount owed on their student loans. The result is that students have lost hundreds of pounds in overpayments.

One of the reasons offered for the problem concerns time lags in the SLC receiving information from HM Revenue and Customs who have to notify them of repayments through the tax system.

The rise in payment charges is being attributed to an increase in the numbers of students reaching the end of their repayments – although the percentage of students overcharged has more than doubled in the past six years from 0.9 per cent to 1.9 per cent. Presently students start repaying loans once they are earning more than £15,000 a year.