you are all allowed to apply for a non-means tested basic maintenance grant (loan)! i think i have confirmation of this somewhere or other, but if you speak to the student loans company they automatically say no because as soon as you enter that you have done a previous degree it blocks the system from doing anything else to your account.

i was speaking to a lovely bloke from my LEA about it and he explained what it was about, and that they were working on getting the system sorted for us troublemakers lol (he didn't actually say that). someone else has looked into it as well and received an email or something from some politician or other haha -i will see if i can find it and post it here.

all is not lost yet (well it had better not be or i can't do the course and feed 2 kids!)