How to Apply for Student Finance for Courses Starting in 2027

England has a new student finance system for courses starting on or after 1 January 2027. Here is which service to use, when it opens, and how to get through the application without the delays that catch people out.

Key Takeaways

Most courses starting on or after 1 January 2027 in England are funded through the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) — a different service from the one used for earlier courses
You need a brand new account. GOV.UK is explicit that an existing Student Finance England account does not carry over to LLE funding — and your parent or partner needs their own separate account too
LLE applications opened in September 2026 for courses starting between 1 January and 31 July 2027. For courses starting from 1 August 2027 — the 2027/28 academic year — GOV.UK says applications open in spring 2027, without naming a date yet
Do not post original documents. Identity is normally confirmed by a digital check using photo ID, and anything else is uploaded as a copy — the old “originals only” rule no longer applies
LLE is an England-only change. SAAS, Student Finance Wales and Student Finance NI run their own processes — apply to the body for where you normally live, not where you plan to study

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Student finance covers two main things: the Tuition Fee Loan, paid straight to your university, and the Maintenance Loan, paid into your bank account to help with living costs. Applying for them is mostly an online form. What changes in 2027 is which online form, and that is the part worth getting right, because GOV.UK warns that applying through the wrong service will delay your application.

If your course starts on or after 1 January 2027 — which covers the whole of the 2027/28 academic year — you will almost certainly apply through the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. If you are already partway through a course that began before that date, nothing changes for you: you stay in the existing Student Finance England service and sign in to the account you already have.

The one-line version: check your course start date first. Everything else on this page follows from it.

This guide walks through both routes, what to have ready before you open the form, the household income step that trips up most applications, and what actually happens after you press submit. If you want to see what the borrowing turns into later, our student loan calculator UK estimates your monthly repayments from your expected salary.

One safety note: start your application by typing the official GOV.UK address into your browser yourself, never from a link in a text, email or social media message — applicants are a prime target, and our guide to student loan scams shows what the fakes look like.

What Has Changed for Courses Starting in 2027

The Lifelong Learning Entitlement is the new student finance system in England. It replaces the previous higher education funding route, and some further education funding, for most courses and modules from levels 4 to 6 and some level 7 courses. In practice that means most undergraduate degrees, plus PGCEs, integrated master's degrees, foundation degrees, Higher Technical Qualifications and some courses previously funded by Advanced Learner Loans.

Your situation	Which service	Account
Starting a course on or after 1 January 2027	Lifelong Learning Entitlement	New account required
Continuing a course that started before 1 January 2027	Existing Student Finance England service	Sign in to your existing account
Transferring onto another course that also started before 1 January 2027	Existing Student Finance England service	Sign in to your existing account
Returning after a break of under 12 months	Existing application is reactivated once your university confirms	Existing account stays open
Returning after 12 months or more, onto a new course starting on or after 1 January 2027	Lifelong Learning Entitlement	New account required

What is different about how the money works

Under LLE, funding is measured in credits rather than years. One credit is roughly 10 hours of expected learning time, and a full-time year of a bachelor's degree is usually 120 credits. You are normally only eligible for student finance when you study between 30 and 180 credits a year. The Tuition Fee Loan is capped per 120 credits — up to £9,790 at the current published rate — and drawn against a lifetime entitlement worth roughly 4 years of full-time study, so previous government-funded study is deducted from what is left.

Repayment terms match Plan 5: you start repaying when you earn over £25,000 a year, and any balance is written off 40 years after the April you are first due to repay. GOV.UK publishes its own Tuition Fee Loan and Maintenance Loan maximums for LLE courses, and they are not simply the 2026/27 figures — check what student loans you can get under LLE for the current amounts before you budget.

A genuinely useful side effect

Since September 2026 you can create an LLE student finance account purely to see an estimate of how much Tuition Fee Loan you have left across your lifetime — useful if you have studied before. You do not have to apply for anything to see it.

Not sure whether your course is covered? Check with your university or college before you start, and read the GOV.UK LLE eligibility guidance. Your provider also has to be registered with the Office for Students.

When Applications Open and Close

There are two opening dates in play, and they depend entirely on when your course starts.

Courses starting 1 January to 31 July 2027: LLE applications opened in September 2026. These are open now.
Courses starting from 1 August 2027 (the 2027/28 academic year): GOV.UK says you will be able to apply from spring 2027. No exact date has been published.
The 2026/27 academic year: still open through the existing service, for courses that started before 1 January 2027.

We are not going to print a precise 2027/28 opening date, because GOV.UK has not published one. “Spring 2027” is what the official guidance says, and anything more specific you see elsewhere is a guess. In previous cycles the equivalent opening has landed in late winter or early spring, so watch for it from February onwards.

The deadline, and why it is not a target

Under LLE you must apply by whichever comes sooner: the last day of the ninth month of your course year, or your course end date. Your course year is the 12-month period starting from the month your course begins. GOV.UK's own worked example: a course starting 15 January 2027 runs a course year to 31 December 2027, the ninth month is September 2027, so the deadline is 30 September 2027.

Applying that same rule to a course starting in September 2027 gives a course year running to August 2028, whose ninth month is May 2028 — so a deadline at the end of May 2028. That is a backstop, not a target. Under the existing service for 2026/27, a course starting between 1 August and 31 December must be applied for by 31 May after the course started.

Either way, leaving it late costs you money in the short term rather than losing you the loan. Our guides to when to apply and the full student finance deadlines for every UK nation set out the dates in detail.

Before You Apply Checklist

Student Finance England says the online application takes about 30 minutes if you have everything to hand. Most of the time people lose is spent hunting for one of these.

What to have ready

Your National Insurance number. It is on payslips and HMRC letters, or you can request a reminder from HMRC. Apply for one first if you do not have it.
Photo ID for the digital identity check. For LLE this is normally a valid passport or driving licence. A valid UK passport also lets you skip straight through the identity step.
UK bank account details in your own name — sort code and account number. This is where the Maintenance Loan lands.
Your course details: university or college, course name, start date, course length, and whether it includes a foundation year, placement year or year abroad. Under LLE you will also be asked how many credits you are studying.
Your parent or partner's contact details, if you want more than the minimum Maintenance Loan — and a heads-up to them that an email is coming.

You do not need a confirmed place

Both services say so explicitly. Put down your first choice, apply, and change it in your account later if Clearing or a change of heart moves you somewhere else. Waiting for an offer is the single most common reason people end up applying late.

Worth five minutes before you start: our list of common student finance application mistakes covers the errors that generate a request for more evidence weeks later.

Step-by-Step Application Process

The shape is the same in both services. The difference is where you start and whether you are creating an account or signing in to one.

Step 1: Start at the right GOV.UK page

Type the address yourself rather than following a link from a message. For a course starting on or after 1 January 2027, start at gov.uk/apply-for-student-finance-lifelong-learning-entitlement. For a course that started earlier, use gov.uk/apply-for-student-finance.

Why it matters: GOV.UK warns that applying through the wrong service can delay your application.

Step 2: Create your account — a new one for LLE

You will need your personal details, an email address you will still have in three years' time, a password and a security question. For LLE you are asked to prove your identity before the account is set up, normally through a digital check with photo ID. If that check will not work for you, you can skip it and enter valid UK passport details later in the application.

Tip: an existing Student Finance England account does not work for LLE. Expect to register from scratch even if you have had student finance before.

Step 3: Personal details and residency

Enter your full legal name exactly as it appears on your ID, your current and previous addresses, your National Insurance number and your UK residency history. Eligibility for the full package usually means your home is in England and you have been living in the UK, Channel Islands or Isle of Man for the three years before your course starts.

Tip: a name that does not match your ID exactly is one of the most common causes of a stalled application. Check the spelling against the document, not from memory.

Step 4: Course and credits

Give your university or college, course name, start date and length. Under LLE you also give the number of credits you will study that year, because both loans are worked out from it. Say if the course includes a foundation year, a placement, a year abroad or a Turing Scheme placement — all of them change the amount.

Tip: under LLE you apply separately for each course or module you want funding for, and you can manage them all from one account.

Step 5: Choose what to apply for

Tuition Fee Loan: not means-tested, paid directly to your university.
Maintenance Loan: partly means-tested. You choose whether it is income assessed or non income assessed — and under LLE, if you study more than one course in a year, that choice applies to all of them.
Extra help: Disabled Students' Allowance, Childcare Grant, Parents' Learning Allowance, Adult Dependants' Grant, travel grants, and NHS or social work funding where relevant. Most of these are means-tested; DSA is not.

Tip: you only repay what you actually borrow, so applying for the full assessment and taking less is usually better than under-applying and finding out in October.

Step 6: Submit, then chase your household

Check everything, accept the terms and submit. Then note your customer reference number (CRN) — an 11-digit number you will need for every phone call and anything you post. Within three hours of you submitting, your parent or partner gets their email. Their part is the slow half of the process, so the sooner they start it, the sooner your full entitlement is confirmed.

Apply on GOV.UK (courses from January 2027)

Household Income and Who Has to Provide It

You have to give household income details if you want more than the minimum Maintenance Loan, or a Childcare Grant, Adult Dependants' Grant or Parents' Learning Allowance. If you would rather not involve anyone, you can still apply — you just get the Tuition Fee Loan and the minimum Maintenance Loan.

Whose income counts

Under 25 and financially dependent on a parent: your parents' income, or one parent's combined with their partner's, if you live with them or depend on them.
Over 25: you are classed as an independent student, so your parents' income is not used. Your partner's income counts if you live with them, even if they spend most of their time abroad.
Under 25 but independent: your parents' income is excluded if you have supported yourself for at least three years, have been married or in a civil partnership at any point before your course starts, spent at least 13 weeks in local authority care before turning 16, or have had no contact with your parents for over a year.
Care leavers: household income is not used to calculate your Maintenance Loan at all — you can choose to borrow the maximum. It is still used to check what other funding you can get.

An easily missed rule: household income always includes your own income from savings, investments or property — dividends or rent, for example. Your own earnings from a part-time job do not count.

Which tax year

Student finance assesses a completed tax year, not your household's income today. For a course starting between 1 January and 31 July 2027, that is the 2024 to 2025 tax year. The same tax year applies to 2026/27 applications through the existing service. GOV.UK has not yet published which tax year applies to courses starting from 1 August 2027, so we are not going to name one here — check the official page when applications open in spring 2027.

What your parent or partner actually does

They get an email from Student Finance England within 3 hours of you submitting. They should wait for it before creating an account.
They create their own account. They cannot use yours, and you cannot use theirs.
They give their National Insurance number, and SFE draws the income figures from HMRC.
They confirm private pension contributions, additional voluntary contributions, and any other financially dependent children.
Confirmation usually takes about 4 weeks once they have submitted.

Income type	Counts as household income?
Employment income (salary, wages)	Yes
Self-employment profits	Yes
Rental income	Yes
Investment income and dividends	Yes
The student's own savings, investments or property income	Yes
Private pension contributions	Declared, and reduce the assessed figure
The student's own income from part-time work	No

If your household income has dropped

If your parent or partner expects their household income to be at least 15% lower than the tax year they gave details for, they can ask for a current year income assessment. They must still supply details for the year SFE asked about first. They then keep the estimate up to date through the year and confirm the actual figure after the tax year ends — if they do not, any extra you received has to be repaid straight away.

Our guide to how household income works goes through the means test itself, including how the loan tapers. For context, under the published 2026/27 England rates the full Maintenance Loan runs up to £10,830 living away from home outside London, £14,135 in London and £9,118 living with parents at a household income of £25,000 or less, falling to the minimum at around £62,410 for students living away outside London.

Proof of Identity and Evidence

This is the part of the process that has changed most, and old advice is still circulating. GOV.UK now says plainly: do not send original documents to Student Finance England for an LLE application. Copies and uploads are the norm.

For LLE, identity is normally confirmed before your account is created, through a digital check using photo ID such as a valid passport or driving licence. If that will not work for you, you can skip the step and enter valid UK passport details later in the application.

Your situation	What to provide
Valid UK passport	Passport details in the application, checked digitally. Nothing to post.
UK national, passport expired or missing	Upload a copy of your birth or adoption certificate, or post a copy. The original is not needed.
Irish national	Upload a copy of your valid Irish passport to your account.
Not a UK or Irish national	Details from a valid passport, national identity card, biometric residence card, or a biometric residence permit — expired permits are accepted.
Care leaver without a birth certificate	Your local authority care team or Personal Adviser can request one for you.

If you have to post something

Upload through your account where you can. If you cannot, the postal address depends on which service you are in — LLE applications and the existing Student Finance England service use different PO boxes in Darlington, and the correct one is printed on the GOV.UK page for your route. Include your 11-digit CRN and a return address, use tracked delivery, and expect anything original to come back within 4 weeks. You do not need to enclose a prepaid envelope.

Changes you have to report

Tell Student Finance England if you change your course, module, university or college, if you are repeating a year or credits, if your Tuition Fee Loan amount changes, if you move, or if your name or marital status changes. Under LLE all of this goes through your online account. Once the year you applied for has started, ask your university to report course and fee changes; name, marital status and address changes still have to come from you.

After You Submit: Tracking, Timings and Payment

You do not need to ring anyone to find out where your application is. Signing in to your account is faster and tells you more.

How long it takes

Tuition Fee Loan and Maintenance Loan applications: 6 to 8 weeks to process, according to GOV.UK.
Household income assessment: usually about 4 weeks after your parent or partner submits their details.
Parent or partner's first email: within 3 hours of you submitting.
Other funding such as Disabled Students' Allowance runs to its own timescales, published separately on GOV.UK.

What to watch in your account

The application status tracker, and the “your actions to complete” list.
A red banner means SFE needs something from you. It turns green when every action is done — that colour change is the single most useful signal on the page.
Your payment schedule, entitlement amount and bank details.
Uploads: evidence goes here rather than in the post.

Our application status tracker guide explains what each stage actually means, because the wording in the account is not always self-explanatory.

Getting paid

The Tuition Fee Loan goes straight to your university. The Maintenance Loan goes to your bank account, but only after your university or college confirms you have registered — usually on or close to your course start date. No registration, no payment, however complete your application is. Payments can slip by a few days while your bank processes them.

If you applied late and the first payment looks small

That is deliberate, not an error. Student Finance England pays the minimum amount first so you have something near the start of term, then tops it up once your household income has been assessed. Grants such as the Childcare Grant, Parents' Learning Allowance and Adult Dependants' Grant are awarded only after that assessment, and are backdated once approved — so you may need to self-fund things like childcare at the very start.

If you do need to speak to someone, our guide to the Student Finance England contact number and opening times lists the official phone lines, webchat windows and postal routes for all four UK funding bodies. Have your CRN with you when you call.

New Students vs Continuing Students

Everyone reapplies every year. What differs is how much you have to re-enter, and which service you are in.

New students starting in 2027

Create a new LLE account — existing accounts do not carry over
Pass the digital identity check, or enter UK passport details later
Complete the application, including credits for the year
Have your parent or partner complete their own income section in their own account
Register with your university before any Maintenance Loan can be paid

Continuing students on a pre-2027 course

You cannot switch to LLE for the next year of a course that started before 1 January 2027
Sign in to your existing student finance account and apply for the new year
Most details are pre-filled; update what has changed, especially your address and living arrangements
Your parent or partner confirms marital status, any changes since last year, pensions and other dependent children

Returning after time out

Under 12 months away: your account stays open and your application is reactivated once your university tells SFE you are back. Sign in and check your details.
12 months or more away: your previous application will have been closed. Returning to a pre-2027 course means the existing service; starting a new course on or after 1 January 2027 means LLE.
Include a letter explaining why you suspended your studies, with supporting evidence — a letter from your doctor, social services or your university on headed paper, or copies of birth or death certificates.

The Four UK Nations

Student finance is devolved. You apply to the body for where you normally live, not where you study — a Scottish student at an English university still applies to SAAS. Deadlines, loan amounts, grants and repayment plans all differ, so this page is written around the England process and points you elsewhere for the rest.

The Lifelong Learning Entitlement is an England-only reform. If you normally live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, nothing on this page about LLE, credits or new accounts applies to you.

England — Student Finance England

Plan 5 for undergraduates who started from August 2023, and the LLE route from January 2027. Tuition fee cap £9,790 at the current published rate.

Scotland — SAAS

Apply to the Student Awards Agency Scotland. No tuition fees for eligible Scottish students at Scottish universities. Plan 4 repayments.

Wales — Student Finance Wales

Wales stayed on Plan 2 rather than moving to Plan 5, and offers a partly non-repayable maintenance package.

Northern Ireland — Student Finance NI

A much lower home tuition fee cap — £4,985 for 2026/27 at NI universities — and Plan 1 repayment terms.

The official application sites are saas.gov.uk, studentfinancewales.co.uk and studentfinanceni.co.uk. Students from Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man apply to their own island's authority rather than to any of the four mainland bodies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which academic year can I apply for, and when do 2027/28 applications open?

Applications for the 2026 to 2027 academic year are open now through the existing Student Finance England service. Applications for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement opened in September 2026 for courses and modules starting between 1 January and 31 July 2027. For courses starting from 1 August 2027 — the 2027/28 academic year — GOV.UK says you will be able to apply from spring 2027. No exact opening date has been published yet, so treat any specific date you see elsewhere with caution.

Do I need a new student finance account for the new system?

Yes, if you are applying for Lifelong Learning Entitlement funding. GOV.UK states that even if you already have a Student Finance England account, you still need to create a new account for LLE funding. Your parent or partner also needs their own separate account — they cannot use yours, and you cannot use theirs.

Can I apply for student finance before I have a confirmed university place?

Yes. Both the existing Student Finance England service and the Lifelong Learning Entitlement service state that you do not need a confirmed place or offer to apply. Enter your first-choice university and course, then update the details in your account later if they change, including after Clearing.

What is the deadline for applying for student finance?

For Lifelong Learning Entitlement funding, you must apply by whichever comes sooner: the last day of the ninth month of your course year (the 12-month period starting from the month your course begins), or your course end date. Under the existing service for the 2026 to 2027 year, a course starting between 1 August and 31 December must be applied for by 31 May after the course started. Both are backstops, not targets — apply as early as you can, because funding that is not processed in time is paid at the minimum rate at first.

How long does a student finance application take to process?

GOV.UK says Tuition Fee Loan and Maintenance Loan applications take 6 to 8 weeks to process. The household income part is assessed separately and usually takes about 4 weeks after your parent or partner submits their details. Your parent or partner receives their email from Student Finance England within 3 hours of you submitting your application.

What if my parents or partner will not give their income details?

You can still apply for a Tuition Fee Loan and the minimum Maintenance Loan without household income details. For 2026/27 in England the minimum Maintenance Loan is £5,048 living away from home outside London, £4,013 living with your parents and £7,039 living away from home in London. Amounts for 2027/28 have not been published yet. If you have had no contact with your parents for over a year you may be able to apply as an estranged student, and if you spent at least 13 weeks in local authority care before you turned 16 you may be able to apply as a care leaver — care leavers' Maintenance Loans are not means-tested at all.

Do I have to post original documents to prove my identity?

No. GOV.UK explicitly says not to send original documents for Lifelong Learning Entitlement applications. Identity is normally confirmed by a digital check using photo ID such as a valid passport or driving licence. If you are a UK national whose passport has expired or is missing, you upload a copy — not the original — of your birth or adoption certificate to your student finance account. Irish nationals can upload a copy of a valid Irish passport.

Do I need to apply for student finance every year?

Yes. You reapply for every year of study. Under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement you apply for each course or module you want funding for, and reapply for each year of a course that lasts longer than a year. Continuing students on a course that started before 1 January 2027 stay in the existing service and sign in to their existing account, where most details are already filled in.

What happens if I apply late?

You can still apply. Student Finance England gives late applicants the minimum amount of funding first, so that there is some money near the start of the course, then pays the rest once the household income details have been checked. Grants such as the Childcare Grant, Parents' Learning Allowance and Adult Dependants' Grant are awarded only after household income is processed, and are backdated once the application is approved.

Can I still get student finance for a part-time course?

Yes. Under the existing service a part-time course needs a course intensity of 25% or more of the equivalent full-time course. Under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement the test is credit-based instead: you are normally only eligible when you study between 30 and 180 credits a year, and a full-time year of a bachelor's degree is usually 120 credits. Maintenance Loans under LLE also require you to attend your course in person and to have some of your Tuition Fee Loan entitlement left.

Ready to Apply?

Check your course start date, pick the right service, and apply early — the deadline is a backstop, not a target.

Apply on GOV.UK View Deadlines

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Student Loan Calculator UK Editorial Team

Editorial Team

This page is maintained by the Student Loan Calculator UK editorial team, checked against GOV.UK and Student Loans Company guidance. Read more about our editorial approach.