Advanced Learner Loan bulletin - August 2025

Service standards

We’ve made some changes to the service standards for academic year (AY) 2025/26. This makes sure of consistency across the standards and helps reduce potential loan overpayments.

You should make sure that your organisation is aware of the updated requirements and that your internal policies align. You must follow these commitments, which we refer to as service standards. This is necessary under DfE’s funding rules for Advanced Learner Loans.

August attendance confirmations

If you have learners on your attendance list who are not actively in learning over the summer period, please make sure you review their status following their anticipated return.

You must then either confirm attendance or submit the relevant change.

Attendance Management

We've added our Attendance Management guidance to the LP Services website.

You must have a published attendance policy, and should communicate it to each learner. If a learner does not meet the attendance policy you should inform us that you’ve suspended or withdrawn the learner.

Adult Skills Fund funding rules AY 2025/26

Last month DfE updated the rules. You may have noticed the simplification of the criteria for Adult Skills Fund starting from August 2025. Individuals are eligible for funding if they are a UK resident on the first day of learning and if the learning is taking place in England.

ALL learners need to have been a UK and Islands resident for three years before the first day of the designated FE course.

LP Portal enhancements

You may have noticed that we’ve recently introduced several system enhancements on the LP Portal. These include the following:

• Added an ‘awaiting validation’ row within the ‘not approved for payment’ section on the PIR and the export facility. This is to give visibility of applications where we are awaiting Home Office checks.
• Removed the pre-population of the CoC effective date. You'll now have to enter the date the change occurred. This will be mandatory and if you do not enter a date, an error message will display.
• The 'missing evidence' link in the assessment information tab has been updated. 'ADIF' is no longer an evidence document. 'Birth Certificate' documents can be a photocopy or the original document.

Partners Support Desk

Our Partners Support Desk is here to help you with any day to day operational questions about individual learners, application processing, payments and system issues.

You can contact the support desk on 0300 100 0643 or by emailing lpservices@slc.co.uk.