The Office for Students (OfS) is consulting on the new “free speech complaints scheme,” one of the central pillars of the government’s plans to support free speech on campus, and you have until 10 March to respond.
There’s also a consultation on the regulation of students’ unions that we’ve written up elsewhere.
The complaints scheme was first outlined back in 2021 with the publication of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. The plans under consultation follow the requirements of the Act scrupulously – and, pending the result of the consultation, should be in place on 1 August 2024.
While we have experience of student complaints adjudication via the work of the Office for the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), OfS is very much starting from first principles with this parallel scheme devoted to freedom of speech issues (as defined, topically this week, in the European Convention on Human Rights as codified in the Human Rights Act 1998).
