A UNIVERSITY student from York still hasn't received a student loan after completing his first year at uni – despite winning an appeal against its refusal.

Joshua Campbell fears he will not be able to afford to go back to Swansea University in September unless he receives the loan to pay his tuition fees and maintenance costs.

The Press reported earlier this year how the 18-year-old had been told last November he was not entitled to a student loan because he hadn’t lived in Britain for the past three years.

He was adopted as a baby from an Ethiopian orphanage by his parents Jill and Gary, and is a British citizen.

Jill, who was awarded the MBE in 2014 for looking after sick people and running a feeding programme for homeless people living on the streets of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, said she and her husband had always paid their national insurance voluntary contributions for every year spent outside the country.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said then that the residency requirement for eligibility for student funding was a long-standing test of a reasonable and relevant connection to the UK.

However, an independent assessor, Emma Davy, has now considered an appeal by Joshua against the decision of the Student Loans Company (SLC) through its operating arm Student Finance England and concluded he is eligible.

She said she considered Mrs Campbell, who now lives in York city centre, was employed in Ethiopia on a genuine “temporary” basis, albeit that her successive one year contracts had added up to what had in practice been a long term placement, and met the terms required by the regulations.

Joshua should therefore be treated as having been ordinarily resident in the UK for the three years prior to the start of his course, and she recommended the SLC should reassess his entitlement on that basis.

She said she had no legal powers to overturn decisions but her recommendations would be followed unless SLC was instructed not to do so by a Secretary of State.

The assessor reached her decision on April 15 but Joshua said he had still not heard if he would get the loan. He said he had had to deal with the appeal process at the same time as he was taking his foundation year exams, hopefully prior to starting a civil engineering degree in the autumn. "It's been very stressful," he added.

A BIS spokesperson said the Department was considering the independent assessor’s report on the case, and would communicate the decision shortly.