Councillor predicted student chaos

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 22nd Nov 2004

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland ( Lib Dem Idle ) predicted last May that the new electronic system for allocating students loans did not work and would cause chaos.

She said

'Bradford used to run its own paper-based system which paid out on time. This year the Student Loan Company introduced a new computer system . It has been live since January and the Council has had huge problems with it. The performance of the system is slow and sometimes it does not work at all.

Now I understand that the Council has a backlog of 1,681 applications and is having to call on other councils to help them deal with it. Even with extra help, the backlog will not be cleared until the middle of December because the basic problem is with the system not the number of staff.

Students who don't get their money on time have problems with paying their rent and other expenses. Having been a student recently and seen the difficulties that students can get themselves into, I know that it is hard enough studying for a degree without being burdened with debt and inefficient systems

This is yet another example of a Government Computer System which does not work. "