THOUSANDS of students were delighted this week when confirmation that their request for a student loan had been approved popped through their letterboxes.

The speedy response was due to the hard work of Surrey County Council's student support service, which processed 20,000 applications from university freshers, in record time.

David Line, head of student support, who leads a team of 30 full-time and three part-time staff, said that 99.8 per cent of all fully-completed applications were processed by the target set by the Department for Education and Skills.