Supporting your child or partner’s student finance application in 3 easy steps

Before you can support an application, your child or partner must apply for student finance, which is based on household income. You will receive an email asking if you wish to support their application, follow these steps to support your child or partner’s student finance application.

If they apply late, we’ll still process their application, but they might not get all their money in time for starting their course. This means they may have to cover any initial costs themselves.

1. Sign in or create your student finance account

When your child or partner applies for student finance which is based on household income, they’ll give us your email address so we can send you a request to support their application. You should follow the instructions in the email to support their application online - do not send us a P60, unless we ask you for it.

If you’re supporting an application for the first time and you’ve never applied for student finance

You’ll need to create an online account for yourself.

Do not use the student’s account to tell us your income details, you must use your own separate one. If you and your partner are supporting your child’s application, your partner will also need to create or sign in to their own online account.

If you’ve supported an application previously or you’ve applied for student finance in the past

Sign in to your existing online account. Don’t worry if you’ve forgotten your log in details, you can reset them on the log in page.

What to do if you’ve not received an email from us

You should sign in to your own online account, or create a new one if you don’t already have an account. Then, scroll down and click the button that says ‘Support an application for student finance’.

You should be able to link to the student’s application by typing in their Customer Reference Number.

If you’re unable to link to the student’s application online, you can upload a form to your account instead:

• PFF2 Assessment of financial circumstances for parents and partners of students form

2. Type in your income details

It helps to have a few things to hand before supporting an application:

• your National Insurance number
• your income details, such as your P60 or finalised self-assessment tax return

You’ll need to provide your household income for the tax year:

• 2020-21 if you’re supporting a students 2022 to 2023 application
• 2019-20 if you’re supporting a students 2021 to 2022 application

3. After you’ve supported the application

Once you’ve submitted your income details, it can take us 6 to 8 weeks to process them and calculate your child or partner’s student finance. Don’t worry if you’ve not heard from us right away!

Your child or partner can login to their online account and check the progress of their application using our new status tracker.

You usually don’t need to send us evidence of your household income as we check your details with HRMC. We may contact you to ask for evidence of your:

• marital status – if you’re separated or divorced
• income – if you’re living abroad or finalising your current year income assessment

You can check the progress of any evidence you’ve submitted by checking your online account.

You can find out more about the types of evidence we can accept and how to send it by visiting our Evidence guidance page.

For more information on supporting a student finance application or if your income changes later in the year, visit our page on Gov.uk.