To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how long on average the Student Loans Company has taken to process an application for a student loan in each year since 2005; and if he will make a statement. (325150)

Academic year 2009-10 was the first year of operation for the new centralised Student Finance England service when all new students studying in England applied for support to the Student Loans Company (SLC), rather than to their local authority, and therefore we can only provide data for this year. The National Audit Office¹ found that the SLC took an average of 12.4 weeks to process new applications.

¹ The Customer First Programme: Delivery of Student Finance - Report by National Audit Office, page 5 - point 6, 19 March 2010.