Complaints

Our complaints team can deal with complaints from anyone directly affected by our work, including complaints about our staff or people working for us. You can complain if you think we have behaved in an unprofessional way or handled our contact with you inappropriately.

Our complaints team can’t deal with complaints about:

• Our regulatory decisions, or the process we have followed to reach those decisions. This includes decisions about applications for registration or degree awarding powers, decisions relating to our risk assessments for a registered provider or its compliance with conditions of registration, and decisions about our funding allocations. There are other ways to challenge these decisions, and they are explained below.
• Disputes between individual students or groups of students and their university or college. Find out how you can make a complaint about your university or college.
• Matters that we have already considered and resolved as part of a previous complaint. If a new complaint is substantially similar to a previous complaint, we will take into account our previous work in responding.
• Matters we judge to be outside our remit.

Where our complaints team can’t deal with a complaint, this may be because there are other more appropriate routes for us to consider things we may have got wrong:

• Our regulatory framework explains how the OfS performs its various functions. We also publish guidance that explains how we regulate in specific areas (our regulatory notices and advice). These documents, between them, cover the processes we follow, including the different ways providers can challenge our decisions. For example, part IV of the regulatory framework explains our approach to degree awarding powers and 'Regulatory advice 12: How to apply for degree awarding powers' gives detailed guidance on the process.
• We have published separately our approach to considering requests for a review of our response to an information rights request, for example a Subject Access Request or Freedom of Information request.
• Where a matter has become the subject of legal proceedings we will not separately consider a complaint about those issues.
• Where a complaint is being dealt with by another organisation, for example the National Audit Office, we will not separately consider a complaint about those issues. We may respond to requests to share information to assist another organisation in considering a complaint, where we have the powers to do so.

If you want to make a complaint, please contact us as soon as possible, normally within 30 calendar days of the event you want to complain about.

You need to tell us:

• What happened and when.
• How it has affected you.
• What you would like us to do.
• Your name and contact details – we can’t consider anonymous complaints.

You also need to send us any relevant supporting evidence.

You can email this information to [email protected] or write to:

Corporate Governance Team (Complaints)
Office for Students
Westward House
Lime Kiln Close
Stoke Gifford
BRISTOL
BS34 8SR

Our complaints team will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within seven calendar days. We will decide whether the complaint falls within the scope of our complaints policy. If it does, a member of staff who was not involved in the issues leading to the complaint will review your complaint. The reviewer may discuss your complaint with anyone connected with it to establish relevant facts.

Our complaints team will write to you within 30 calendar days to let you know the outcome of our review of your complaint. Our complaints process follows, and is subject to, the Parliamentary and Heath Service Ombudsman's Principles of Good Complaint Handling.

We commit to:

• Considering and responding to complaints fairly, effectively and courteously without prejudice.
• Dealing with complaints promptly – if we can’t meet our published timescales, we tell you and keep you informed about progress.
• Giving clear reasons for our decisions about your complaint.
• Using the experience and knowledge we gain from considering complaints to improve the way we work and our performance.
• Acting fairly towards our staff as well as those making complaints – we will tell members of staff that they have been complained about and, where appropriate, give them an opportunity to respond.

If you’re not happy with the outcome of your complaint, you can contact the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) through your Member of Parliament.

Occasionally, we receive complaints that are vexatious or unreasonably persistent, or otherwise made in bad faith. Such a complaint would be likely to prevent the OfS from carrying out its business. We would consider a complaint to be vexatious or unreasonably persistent if it is, in our view, unfounded, unreasonable or trivial and made with the intention of wasting the OfS’s time and resources, or would have that effect.

We will not respond to complaints that have an improper purpose or effect, such as harassment of the OfS or its staff, or repeated requests that take up a disproportionate amount of time and resources. On the rare occasions this happens, we may need to restrict or discontinue contact with a complainant.

We will treat complaints in confidence and in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and any subsequent data protection legislation, and the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The OfS is a data controller for the purposes of data protection legislation. We hold and process data in accordance with the principles set out in data protection legislation.

We will keep records of the complaints we receive to make sure that we are considering and responding to them efficiently and effectively.