Adult Learner
Career Development Loans (CDL)
Last update - 30 June 2008
A CDL is a bank loan designed to help you pay for work-related learning. You don't have to start paying your loan back until at least one month after you stop training.A CDL can help you gain the experience, training and qualifications you need to improve your job skills or even launch a new career.
You can use it to fund a variety of vocational (work-related) courses with a wide range of organisations, so you are able to choose the course that best suits your needs. You can take out a CDL whether you are employed, self-employed or unemployed.
Latest Update
The way in which learning providers receive course fee payments when a learner uses a Career Development Loan (CDL) is changing.
Currently the majority of learning providers receive the whole of the learner’s course fees when the learner starts their course. Learners can however arrange for their bank to pay their course fees to the learning provider in several different stages if the learning provider will accept payment in this way.
The CDL programme has undergone a comprehensive review over the last two years and one measure identified during this process was the introduction of staged payments of course fees to the learning provider as a matter of routine rather than by exception.
Therefore, from 2 June 2008, the LSC is introducing staged payments for course fees if those courses cost over £2,000 and are over three months in duration.
This means that learners applying for a CDL from 2 June 2008, whose courses meet these criteria, will have their course fee payments split into a number of equal stages, up to a maximum of four installments.
It will be a requirement of registration for learning providers to accept payments made by means of a CDL on this basis.
This change will only come into force in respect of CDLs applied for after the 2 June 2008.
Please note that the guidance for CDL learning providers changed on 13 February 2007.
The LSC has written to learning providers currently on the register to explain the process for re-registration.
If you are seeking to register as a CDL learning provider for the first time, even if you have recently accessed guidance and/or submitted it to LSC, you will need to register under the terms of the guidance now on this site. If you have any queries about this, please contact:
cdl.learning.providers@lsc.gov.uk.
Requirements for Registration as a CDL Learning Provider (128KB) - 30 June 2008
Learning Provider Guidance: Annexes A-D (228KB)
Visit the CDL section on Directgov
