Student Finance England (SFE): Current application timescales

This page is usually updated on a Monday, but some weeks this may change. This page was last updated on Monday 28 September at 16:00.

If you’ve applied for student finance for 2025 to 2026

If you’re still waiting for your application to be approved, there’s no need to contact us. Sign in to your account to find out when to expect your next update on your application or evidence.

If you’ve applied for student finance for 2026 to 2027

If you’ve recently applied for student finance, we might give you the minimum amount to make sure you have some funding near the start of your course.

How long it takes us to work on your application depends on what you’ve applied for and how many other students are applying at the same time.

Our timescales are provided in ‘working days’, this refers to the days Monday to Friday and excludes weekends and bank holidays.

Example: If we received your evidence on Thursday 17 October and the current timescale is 5 working days, you should expect an update on Thursday 24 October.

Remember to check the progress of your application using your student finance account.

If you’ve sent us evidence or made a change to your application

If you’ve sent evidence to help us work out how much you can get, or you’ve told us that your circumstances have changed, the table below shows when you should expect an update from us.

Our timescales are provided in ‘working days’, this refers to the days Monday to Friday and excludes weekends and bank holidays.

Example: If we received your evidence on Thursday 17 October and the current timescale is 5 working days, you should expect an update on Thursday 24 October.

If you’ve uploaded evidence or made a change to your application, your student finance account might not update straight away. We’ll update it once we’ve actioned your change or reviewed your evidence.

If you’ve applied for Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA)