Universal Credit for Uni student

Hi All,

Any thoughts on this?

I have a young lady who is on UC with LCWRA as well as PIP. she has just started to undertake a part time open university course but has not taken on any student loan.

UC are now saying she is a student and although is not receiving a student loan/finance is treated as having that income , i believe they are referring to UC regs 68 (5) (5) A person is to be treated as having a student loan where the person could acquire by taking reasonable steps to do so.

This seems so unfair- anyway out of this?

Thanks in advance!

It has always been the case that money which is available to you but which you choose not to apply for is taken into account against you for the purposes of means tested benefits. The remedy is just to apply for those funds.

I don’t know what the funding situation is like for part time studies these days but when I was very briefly a part time student, there was a grant or loan towards the tuition fees but there wasn’t any ‘maintenance’ type funding available, so there would have been nothing to take into account as student income whether or not I had applied for it. Perhaps the situation is different now.

The OU website says
All OU students are considered part-time students. That means, even if you choose to study at full-time equivalent intensity, you’ll be a part-time student and your eligibility to claim existing state benefits and/or to fund your studies with a Part-Time Tuition Fee loan will usually be unaffected.
https://www.open.ac.uk/courses/fees-and-funding

Gov.uk says
https://www.gov.uk/student-finance/parttime-students
You can only apply for a Maintenance Loan as a Distance Learning student if you cannot attend your course in person because of a disability.