Regulating relevant students’ unions – a quick guide to our proposals
Please note, the information on this page describes proposals. We expect to start regulating relevant students’ unions on free speech matters from 1 August 2024.
Under new legislation, 'relevant' students' unions will have a duty to take steps to secure free speech within the law and to maintain a code of practice on free speech.
The legislation also requires the OfS to monitor and regulate how students’ unions comply with their new duties.
Our work in this area is expected to take effect from 1 August 2024.
For the most part, 'relevant' students' unions refers to those students' unions at universities and colleges registered with the OfS in the ‘Approved (fee cap)’ category.
We have set out in a public consultation how we propose to carry out this new role and we welcome feedback on our proposals. This guide gives a brief summary of our proposals. Our proposals are set out in full in the consultation document.
These proposals sit alongside our plans to set up and operate a free speech complaints scheme for English higher education.
What are we proposing?
We are proposing that we will compile and publish a list of the relevant students' unions that we will monitor and regulate.
We will publish this information on the OfS website by 1 August 2024. It will include:
- the name of the students' union
- the name of the associated university or college.
This will make it clear publicly which students’ unions we regulate and also which fall within the OfS’s free speech complaints scheme, according to the information that we hold.
We have already asked universities and colleges registered in the ‘Approved (fee cap)’ category to submit information about their students’ unions to us.
We are proposing to publish guidance for students' unions about their free speech duties.
We propose to publish this guidance in a new section of our regulatory framework.
This includes guidance for the purpose of helping to determine whether or not relevant students’ unions are complying with their free speech duties.
We are proposing to monitor relevant students' unions in a risk-based and targeted way.
It means that we are not proposing to assess each students' union on a regular, scheduled basis.
Instead, we may:
- Gather information from a range of sources
This could include interactions with students' unions, information that universities and colleges report to us about free speech, notifications that we receive. We may also draw on surveys or media reporting. - Use input from students
This may be insights from surveys, complaints raised with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (the higher education complaints handling body), or we may seek information directly from individual students. - Require students' unions to report to us
We will require relevant students' unions to tell us about any event or matter that could affect their ability to comply with their free speech duties.
If we consider that a students' unions is failing, or has failed, or is at risk of failing to comply with any of its free speech duties, we propose that we may intervene.
This could mean:
- asking the students' union to undertake either to do or not to do things that we specify
- imposing a monetary penalty or a fine. We will only do this if it appears to us that the students' union is not complying, or has not complied, with its free speech duties.
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