Your loan already has an end date
You're thirtyish and you'd quite like to know when this ends.
It was set the April after you left your course, and it has been running ever since
You didn't choose it, you can't move it, and it started without asking you.
Every plan writes the loan off a fixed number of years after the April you were first due to repay — for most people, the April after they left the course. Not the April you got your first job. Not the month deductions actually started. That April.
So if you left in the summer of 2018, your clock started in April 2019, and on Plan 2 it stops in April 2049.
The clock runs in the years you pay nothing at all
This is the part worth knowing, and almost nobody is told it.
Under the threshold and paying zero? The clock still runs. Out of work, travelling, raising children, in a badly paid first job, back in study — all of it counts towards your 25, 30 or 40 years. Nothing pauses. Nothing is added on the end.
Which means the years when this felt worst are years you were quietly getting through.
How long you wait depends on your plan, and on nothing else
Not your balance, not your salary, not what you studied.
| Your plan | Written off | If you were first due to repay in April 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| Plan 1 | 25 years | April 2044 |
| Plan 2 | 30 years | April 2049 |
| Plan 4 (Scotland) | 30 years | April 2049 |
| Postgraduate (Plan 3) | 30 years | April 2049 |
| Plan 5 | 40 years | April 2059 |
Two loans means two dates: an undergraduate and a postgraduate loan are separate in every respect, and the second doesn't end because the first did.
Plan 5 waits forty years, and more of those borrowers clear it
Both of those facts point the same way, and it isn't the friendly way.
If you started in 2023/24 or later you're on Plan 5, and the government expects 55% of you to repay in full — against 32% on Plan 2. That reads like good news and isn't. Plan 5 has a lower threshold, ten more years of collecting, and no punitive interest to inflate a balance nobody was ever going to clear.
More people finish a Plan 5 loan because Plan 5 is built to be finished. That is the same sentence as you will pay more of it.
Two things end a loan early, and one shrinks it
One of them almost nobody mentions.
If a borrower dies, the Student Loans Company cancels the loan. It isn't inherited, and it isn't taken from an estate.
If you can no longer work through illness or disability, SLC may cancel it — conditional on claiming certain disability benefits, and it needs an application with evidence. Not automatic.
Full-time students from Wales can also have £1,500 of the Maintenance Loan cancelled.
Where this gets complicated
Three places, and I'd rather tell you than have you find them.
The date depends on records you can't see. Yours is whatever SLC holds as the April you were first due to repay — and if you took a year out, transferred, or left and returned, it may not be the one you'd guess. Check your online repayment account.
The terms have been changed before. Plan 5's forty years was itself a change, and a future government could move any of it.
Very old loans work on a different rule, and it's an age rather than a term.
The pre-2006 rule, and how to tell if it's yours
Plan 1 loans where the first payment reached you before 1 September 2006 are written off when you turn 65, not 25 years on. Plan 4 loans first paid before 1 August 2007 are written off at 65 or after 30 years, whichever comes first.
It turns on when the money was first paid, not when you enrolled.
Almost nobody reading this is in that group: it needs a course start around twenty years ago, which puts you outside the ages this site is written for. But if it is you, the table above is not yours — and the calculator does not model the age-65 rule either.
So the real question isn't when — it's whether you get there first
The date is fixed. Whether anything is left on it is not.
If you'll clear the loan first, this date never matters. If you won't, it's the only one that does — everything after it is cancelled, and everything before it is 9% of what you earn above a line.
The calculator works out which. And if it's the balance climbing in the meantime that bothers you, that number is not what you think it is.
I can't tell you what to do about your own loan. This is information rather than advice.
2026/27 tax year, from GOV.UK and DfE's Student loan forecasts for England (9 July 2026). Full workings.