Ok, so this thread will only be of interest to a small number of Britassians, but I thought I'd enquire here anyway.

I recently got a letter from the Student Loans Company asking about repayment of my student loan. You're only eligible to repay your student loan when you're earning over £15,000 a year. I'm now a PhD student, recieving a grant from the EPSRC and I'm technically eligible but I'm not sure if it counts if it's non-taxable income. They ask for evidence of how I'm supporting myself, and I'm not sure what to provide.

Are postgrad students supposed to start repaying student loans out of their grant?

One of my best mates is doing a PhD in Chemistry and I'm seeing him tomorrow. I'll ask him for you.

My gut feeling is that you shouldn't be paying it back now though.

No you shouldnt have to pay it back

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simple answer, no,

Funding given to UK PhD students by STFC, EPSRC and the like is counted as non-taxable income, it's a scholarship in essence and will not count towards calculations on how much you pay back on your student loan.

They work out how much you should pay back after you break the threshold of taxable income over (what I think is) ~£10,000, important thing being taxable.

Everyone I know who was out at CERN wasn't paying back any of their loan, so don't worry Mort, get the form, send off a letter of studentship from your Uni, forget about it for the next 3years or so.

Student Finance Direct have been utter crap this year, anyway.

But I've recently forgiven them because, despite the delayed payment of both my tuition and maintenance loans, they re-assessed my application and gave me a supplementary grant on top of my loan.

For some reason the SLC keep sending me a new assessment for my loans at the moment, only it's always the exact same letters with a different date on it.

I now have 3 sets of letters from the last month?

The problem with the SLC is all the testicles in their mouths stopping from them from doing any work.