From September 2023, the interest rate on student loans taken out has also been set to RPI+0% and the length of time that students pay their loans back until they can be written off has also been extended from 30 to 40 years.

University tuition fees have also been capped at £9,250, which is where it has been since 2018,  for the next two years and will not rise with inflation.

The Department for Education (DoE) said that the changes would ‘rebalance the burden of student loans more fairly between the student and the taxpayer and ensure that in future graduates don’t pay back more than they borrowed in real terms’.

The measures have been introduced in response to the Augar review of post-18 education and funding which was published in 2019 and are aimed at stemming the soaring cost of student loans. At the end of March last year the value of outstanding loans stood at £161bn and is forecast to rise to about £500bn by 2043.