Boss forced to quit after speaking out

THE boss of Student Loans Company has claimed he was forced to quit after publicly criticising the organisation.

Steve Lamey, a former chief operations officer at Revenue & Customs, said he was dismissed last week after telling a conference of university administrators that SLC was a ‘mess’ and as badly run as Britain’s tax authority was 20 years ago.

The SCL manages more than £100billion in loans held by six million students and graduates, and has been dogged with problems for many years. Mr Lamey, 60, had been suspended in July after just over a year in the job as he tried to reform SLC following complaints of inefficiency, poor customer service and practices that included sending fake debt collection notices to graduates.

A disciplinary report found Mr Lamey guilty of breaching ‘ethical standards’.

Yesterday, Mr Lamey said in an interview with The Times: ‘Almost all of the allegations against me were made by disgruntled staff who were upset with the way I was changing the organisation and who had received poor performance reviews.

‘I can only conclude they were more interested in hiding the chronic problems [of the] SLC rather than facing up to them in public.’

The SLC said Mr Lamey had been dismissed ‘following investigations into allegations about his management and leadership’.