Glory Osarenren Otabor, R (on the application of) v Student Loans Company

Eligibility for postgraduate student finance under the Education (Postgraduate Master’s Degree Loans) Regulations 2016 depends on ordinary residence read with lawful residence throughout the prescribed three-year period. A fee-waiver request is not itself an immigration application for the purposes of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971. After refusal of a fee waiver, the relevant protection is preserved only if an immigration application is made within the prescribed ten working days. A later fee-waiver request does not revive it. A decision-maker may rely on materially accurate immigration-status information. Earlier funding decisions, or an oversight in obtaining later checks, do not establish entitlement to different funding under different facts and regulations.

The claimant sought judicial review of the defendant’s refusal of postgraduate finance for a course beginning in April 2026. The refusal rested on information from the Secretary of State for the Home Department that the claimant had not been lawfully resident throughout the required three-year period under the Education (Postgraduate Master’s Degree Loans) Regulations 2016.

Permission was granted only on whether the long-residence requirement was met. The claimant relied on a fee-waiver history and asserted that he had maintained lawful status. He also pointed to earlier undergraduate funding, but his legitimate-expectation grounds were refused permission and were not renewed. The central issue was whether the fee-waiver process engaged section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 and made the status verification materially wrong.

Disposition. The claim was dismissed. Although the proceedings challenged the 9 February 2026 appeal decision, the proper target was the original 17 December 2025 decision; no limitation objection was taken and the issues were identical.

1. The long-residence route under the Education (Postgraduate Master’s Degree Loans) Regulations 2016 required ordinary residence in the United Kingdom and Islands throughout the relevant three years. Paragraph 1(3) of Schedule 1 required that residence to be lawful. The Defendant had delegated functions to determine eligibility and could make the necessary inquiries.
2. The claimant’s saved online form of 7 November 2023 was not a submitted immigration application. A fee-waiver request was not itself an immigration application for the purposes of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 and paragraph 34G of the Immigration Rules. The court applied the reasoning in Hussain v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKUT 00082 (IAC).
3. After the fee-waiver refusal was notified on 10 June 2024, the claimant needed to submit an immigration application within ten working days to rely on the earlier fee-waiver date. He did not do so. The further fee-waiver request of 19 June 2024 did not engage section 3C, and the immigration application was not made until 23 August 2024. The SVEC was therefore materially accurate.
4. The Defendant did not act unlawfully, unreasonably or irrationally by relying on that information. The discrepancy between the internal refusal date and the notification date was immaterial. The fact that the claimant may not have understood that his lawful status had ended did not alter his status, and the underlying immigration decisions were not challenged.
5. The earlier undergraduate funding decisions did not establish entitlement to postgraduate finance. They concerned different decisions, facts and regulations. Even if an oversight had occurred in obtaining later status checks, that would not make the postgraduate decision unlawful.
6. The judge additionally addressed the refused and unrenewed legitimate-expectation grounds. There was no clear and unambiguous promise of postgraduate finance. The court referred to R (Zafari) v HMRC [2023] EWHC 3013 and R (Begbie) v The Department of Education and Employment [1999] EWCA Civ 2100 in explaining the limits of legitimate expectation and the caution required before fixing a public authority permanently with the consequences of a mistake.