Minutes
Collection of Student Loans Consultation Group
Tuesday 9 September 2014
The Elizabethan Room, Civil Service Club
13/15 Great Scotland Yard, London, SW1A 2HJ
Attendees
/ Steven Darling (HMRC)Alex Lawrence (HMRC)
Bethan Chant (HMRC)
Paul Crooks (HMRC)
Christine Rowse (HMRC) / Karen Duncan (BIS)
Ann Elmer (ATT)
Linda Pullan (Payroll Alliance)
Samantha Mann (CIPP)
Dialling in
/ Claire McGhee (SLC)Jackie McGale (SLC) / Kelly Sizer (LITRG)
Apologies / David Clarke (HMRC)
Luke Edwards (HMRC)
Pauline de Pellette (SLC)
Matthew Brown (CIOT)
Lorna Gunn (DA Scotland)
MiriamCraven (DA Scotland)
Helen Hargreaves (CIPP) / Chris Jones (DA Wales)
Jackie Petherbridge (FSB)
John Neill (DA Northern Ireland)
Norman Green (BCS)
David Malcolm (NUS)
Geoff Castle (BCS)
Al Smith (BIS)
1. Introduction and opening remarks
Steven Darling / Steven Darling thanked everyone for attending and explainedthathe had taken over from Liz Cunningham in the Product and Process owner role for Student Finance. He has only been in the role for a couple of months and is enjoying the work and also working with external stakeholders.
Introductions were then made round the table.
Steven welcomed back Kelly Sizer who is returning from maternity leave and Samantha Mann who is covering for this meeting as Helen Hargreaves CIPP (Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals) is on holiday.
Steven advised that Angela Williams has moved on and formally thanked her for her contribution to the CSL Consultation Group. ICAEW are looking for a replacement.
2. SLC - Information Advice and Guidance
Claire McGhee / Claire McGhee advised that she was interested in getting a dialogue with the Group on repayment guidance as the focus is more on entering repayment with less focus on going into repayment. The issue is often around the timing of messages as the messages are sent around the time when borrowers are entering repayment.
Claire then covered some specific issues:
At a previous meeting Liz Hughes from LITRG has asked about SLC having a group who go out talking to schools. Claire explained that they have a Student Finance Information team in England and Wales whose role is more about “educating the educators”. They don’t deal directly with students but work with the schools and career services who will deal directly with students.
Claire advised that the SLC are currently doing some work on an ‘exit’ interview, which is presently being used in universities by their student advisors. This will help get messages to people when they are nearer to entering the repayment stage and more interested in it.
Kelly Sizer asked about the suite of resources on the website and if this can be accessed externally. Claire advised that it could be and will share the link to the practitioner’s website. This is not a public facing site for students but is aimed at practitioners who would then share the resource as needed. Claire explained that following feedback the website is being changed as they had currently grouped the information by audience type but the preference is for it to be grouped as a package. The changes will be made in line with the launch of the 15-16 Academic Year (AY).
Action: To send the link to Christine Rowse for sharing with the Group.
Claire added that student loan information is on a number of sites and they also use other people’s channels. However where they don’t own the site they can’t change the information unless they have identified incorrect information. They have very few owned sites only their Repayment site and the Student Finance zone in the student room, they also have pages on the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) site.
They have Cabinet Office exemption for the Student Loan Repayment website and are working on getting a new version up and running. However they are in the middle of a transformation Programme at the SLC and this presents resource issues. They are therefore trying to address and improve the Repaymentsite when they can.
With Gov.UK site they don’t own the content or the format. Claire explained that they only ‘factcheck’ the information and the style and layout are set by Gov.UK.
Claire advised that the SLC are actively working on the 15-16 campaign and are reviewing and refreshing the guidance. They now print very little guidance only some quick guides (A4 sheet) as all guidance is online on the ‘Student Room’.
Steven asked the Group if they had any questions:
- SamanthaMann asked that with the SLC’s resource issue could the representative bodies help to get the information out. Claire McGhee advised that if the information already exists she would be happy for it to be distributed. But where information exists, but it is needed in a different format then they would need resource to help get it out.
- Alex Lawrence asked if they had any plans to enhance direct engagement with borrowers when they go into repayment and how to align this engagement with HMRC.
Action: To provide contact details for the SLC to follow up on off-line activity. / (1) Claire McGhee
(2) Christine Rowse
3. HMRC updates, including policy and legislative changes
Paul Crooks /
- Work on ‘Plan 2’, for repayments starting in April 2016, is moving from the ‘design’ into the ‘build and test’ stage and we are on target for an April 15 delivery.
- We are continuing to work on Employer Prompts and will use them where an employer has not made a student loan deduction, making use ofReal Time Information (RTI) to notify employers electronically. We raised a business cases which was with BIS for funding agreement. This has been approved and we will be staring the work with a delivery date of April 2016. Currently, on an end of year basis, we check the form P14 and where the payments are over the threshold and student loan deductions are expected we would send out a new Start Notice. By using RTI and the Full Payment Submission (FPS) we will be able to alert employers earlier and in year.
Samantha Mann asked about thetime frame and Paul clarified that from April 2016 we would move to the FPS check.
Linda Pullan highlighted that if this was to be a generic notice thereare teething problems with the Generic Notification Service (GNS). Linda explained that where employers are not getting the right messages at the right time they are ignoring the messages. Paul advised thatwe don’t know if we will be using GNS as the solution is still unclear at present.
Samantha Mann added that while the concept of GNS was good, with different business areas using it, there is a danger that employers will receive too many messages and again they may be ignored especially by agents.
Alex advised that is would be explored as part of early development.
Samantha added that it was important to clearly identify the client as well as the individual on the message especially for agents. They need to be able to distinguish between messages and recognise any that require action.
Paul asked the Group to send in their experiences of using GNS.
Action: To send in their experiences of using GNS. / (3) All
Bethan Chant / Bethan highlighted some articles in the August 2014 (Issue 49) Employer bulletin:
- Employers can claim an Employment Allowance, which will reduce the amount of employer Class 1 National Insurance contributions (NICs) they have to pay. There is no impact on student loans.
- In-year penalties for late filing start from October 2014. As it’s a single return it will be a single penalty there will be no separate student loan based penalty.
- HMRC will be sending out a new annual tax summary. Around 16 million tax summaries will be delivered by post to PAYE taxpayers between October and December 2014. Individuals in Self Assessment will get their tax summary online. The tax summary will only show income tax and NIC and no student loan deductions will appear. This is the first year and a pilot so unclear if it will be repeated.
- Bethan explained that at a previous meeting she had asked the Group what information they would like to see published. Since then Bethan has reviewed the position and the current conclusion is that no more information needs to be published. Bethan advised the Group that she was still open to suggestions if there was anything they would like to see published.
- HMRC is introducing a new measure, from April 2015,which will abolish employers having to pay NIC for under 21 year olds.There will be no impact for student loans and further information will be available in a later Employer Bulletin.
- The BIS consultation on a Sharia-compliant alternative finance product closed in July and the response was published in September. We are now looking at howto bring a product in.
- For certain occupations there are special rules for NIC and student loans. These cases need special treatment and we have been looking at how to deal with the queries and at guidance for call handlers. We now have a process in place with escalation routes so things should go more smoothly.
- One of the categories was entertainers where no tax was due but Class 1 NICand therefore student loan deductions were still due. In April 2014 there was a change in the regulations and in certain circumstances student loan deductions are no longer appropriate. At the last meeting we shared the guidance on this with the Group (see AP2/030614).Alex referred to Claire’scomments about some of the difficulties the SLC had faced with the Gov.UK site and advised that HMRC are having similar difficulties. We are still working to get the guidance published but the guidance doesn’t fit with Gov.UK’s style and may not sit on the website. The guidance will be included in the next Employer Bulletin
Linda Pullan added that is was aconcern for both HMRC and the employer reps. She does feedback any errors she finds on the Gov.Uk site and highlights any issues to Gov.UK.
Alex Lawrence / Alex advised that:
- The quarterly performance report is due to BIS in a couple of weeks so he will cover these results at the next meeting.
- The figures for P14 performance are that 2.95million P14s are expected and we have sent 2.918million P14s to the SLC, which is just under 99%. RTI and electronic filing have contributed to getting the vast majority of P14s processed and sent to the SLC. The balance of P14s is a mix of employers still to send in their returns and P14s received which need to be looked at manually.
Alex added that from a wider perspective we did have a separate RTI update but as the RTI process in now business as usual it will be included as part of the Service Delivery update.
4. Digital update
Bethan Chant / Bethan advised that she is leading the work on driving forward the Digital Agenda for Student Finance and this will be a regular slot on the agenda.
Bethan covered:
- Our student loan forms should be ‘digital by default’ but were being sent in the post. There is a fix in place to change the default option to "electronic" from October and we will be looking at the stats in April to see the impact this change has made. The employer can still receive the forms as paper but will need to go in and select this option.
- We are looking at digital outputs for the employer and the borrower. HMRC is developing separate accounts for PAYE customers and we are considering the impact of whether student loan repayments appear in the statement or not.
- We are working jointly with the SLC who are developing their online account for borrowers. The SLC are looking at online statements and online balances but their accounts are only updated annually. With RTI this could change and while HMRC and the SLC are working to have their outputs as close as possible this is still a long way off.
5. BIS Updates
Karen Duncan /
- As it is the yearbefore a general election there are unlikely to be any major changes to the Regulations, just tidying up.
- Claire McGhee mentioned that the SLChave people goingout to speak to trainers. BIS is also doing some work in this area, for example they have a group of group of graduates and they will be talking to the new starts for AY15-16. They will also be speaking at schools to parents and their children. Karen will share the link to this work with the Group.
- Continuing to work with other countries for oversees borrowers, which will support the SLC in getting borrowers back into repayment.
- Bethan touched on the Sharia-compliant consultation, BIS received a high response which was in favour of having an alternative student financed product. However putting a suitable vehicle in place will take time. Karen willshare the link to the response to the consultation with the Group.
- The National Audit Office (NAO) paper highlighted the need for BIS, HMRC and the SLC to work together andrecommended a joint strategy. Work has started on this and there have been several meetings with BIS, HMRC and the SLC and a document will be published soon. The work is being led by Al Smith from BIS, who is Karen’s new line manager and will be attending future meetings. Alwill provide an update on the RepaymentStrategy at the next meeting.
(5) Karen Duncan
6. SLC updates
Jackie McGale /
- The SLC are re-structuring within the RepaymentDepartment. Kevin O’Connor is now the Head of Repayments and Pauline de Paulette has moved to look after Direct Repayments. Jackie advised that she is also moving to the Transformation Programme but will continue to represent the SLC on the Consultation Group in the interim and there will be a new person in the future.
- They had an issue, withmortgage style loans,where customers had been sent correspondence which was not fully compliant with the Consumer Credit Act. All customers have been contacted and there were no major issues, they had some complaintsbut these were handled in the normal manner. This issue is now resolved.
- They are introducing Semaphone which will securely protect customer information for customers making card payments over the phone. The delivery date is March 15 in line with other updates to the system, which also fits in with other dependencies.
- Work is continuing with the online statement project and phase 1b is underway for 6,000 customers. The statement has not been developed any further as key decisions are needed. The online statements sit on the customer portal but SLC also need to think about repayer data and decide which portal is most appropriate and aloes need to decide on the branding.