When does my student loan get written off?
Every UK student loan plan has a cut-off: a set number of years after you first became liable to repay, after which whatever balance is left — however large — is cancelled. You keep paying the same fixed share of income above your threshold every year until then, whether that clears the loan early or not.
The write-off period, by plan
- Plan 1: 25 years
- Plan 2: 30 years
- Plan 4 (Scotland): 30 years
- Plan 5: 40 years
- Postgraduate Loan: 30 years
These are the standard periods. Two older loan types differ: a Plan 1 loan first paid before 1 September 2006 is written off when you’re 65, and a Plan 4 loan first paid before 1 August 2007 is written off at 65 or after 30 years, whichever comes first. See Plan 1 explained and Plan 4 (Scotland) explained. A loan can also be cancelled early on death or, in some cases, disability: see is a student loan cancelled if you die or can’t work?
The clock starts from the April after you left your course
The count doesn’t start on your graduation date, or the date you actually made your first payment. It starts from the April after you left or finished your course, which is the earliest you can become due to repay. That’s also the date used in this site’s calculator, in the “tax year you first started repaying” field. (For a part-time course that runs longer than four years, repayments start in the April four years after the course began.)
This trips people up in two ways:
- If you left your course early or studied part-time, your start date may not match your graduation date. You still repay a loan if you leave early.
- The write-off date doesn’t move once it’s set, whether you start earning immediately or take years off work.
Why this is the whole ballgame
Whether your loan is realistically going to be cleared through repayments before the write-off date, or cancelled with a balance still outstanding, is usually the single biggest factor in deciding whether overpaying makes sense:
- If the loan would be written off before it’s paid down, extra repayments mostly just hand money to the government early that would otherwise have been cancelled for free. Investing that money instead is usually the stronger option.
- If the loan would be cleared anyway before the write-off date, the interest it charges in the meantime is a real cost, and overpaying to reduce it can be worthwhile — if it beats what you’d earn investing instead.
This depends on your balance, your salary and its likely growth, and your plan’s threshold and interest rate together — there’s no shortcut that works for everyone. The calculator runs both scenarios year by year using your own numbers and shows which one comes out ahead. See should I overpay my student loan? for the general logic, or the disclaimer for what the modelling does and doesn’t account for.