One girl is facing the prospect of having her university dreams shattered due to an administrative problem at the Student Loans Company.

The Student Loans Company provide tuition fees and living costs. Many students, such as Louise Rigg, rely on this money to make attending university a possibility. Louise Rigg needs both a tuition fee loan and a loan for living costs, which together would add up to around £8,000.

But despite securing a place at East 15 Acting School which is affiliated to the University of Essex, to study for a BA honours in technical theatre, she may not be able to attend the course as her loan has still not been arranged by the Student Loans Company.

She plans to leave on Saturday to move into her student accommodation, but without the loan she will not be able to pay the rent and deposit needed to secure a room. Her course is due to start on Monday, but again, not having the loan she may not be able to pay her tuition fees which would mean she cannot enrol and attend lessons and she faces the risk that the university may ask her to leave.

Louise said: “As far as I know, the university gives you a couple of weeks with the payment. But then they say ‘you’re not paying, you can’t be on the course’.

“It’s very worrying considering that I’m going in four days and I really wanted to have it all sorted as I have rent to think of and food to buy as well as my university to pay.”

What should be one of the most exciting times in a young persons life is becoming an extremely stressful time for Louise Rigg as not having the loan is threatening her future.

Louise, 21, said: “I applied around April. I filled the first form in and didn’t hear anything back. Then I got a letter saying that it had been approved but then I got a payment schedule through which said I had applied for zero pounds. It also told me how much I could be getting, but I was getting nothing. I phoned them up and they said you can’t have filled the form in right, so I filled it in again. But it happened twice more.”

The problem at student loans seems to have stemmed from the fact that Louise Rigg's circumstances have changed since she first filled out the application form for a tuition fee loan and a living expenses loan.

Miss Rigg's stepfather, Malcolm Higgins has been plagued with health problems which have meant he has been forced to take early retirement, changing the family income.

Mr Higgins and Louise's mother Christine have both sent off their P60 forms to the student loan company, but the company claim not to have received them and keep sending the couple letter asking for the forms. Even worse, at one point their P60 forms were returned to them and when they opened the letter they found that while their forms were present the package also contained another P60 belonging to someone else.

Mr Higgins said: “This is an extremely important document with personal details on it.”

A spokesperson for Student Finance Direct said: “We’ve investigated this matter and have clarified with Louise the status of her application which will be paid on time.