The return to in person board meetings is a difficult time for any organisation.
For a regulator that has been keen to follow ministers in suggesting no serious learning or conversation can happen online, it must be doubly disconcerting. The raw, coruscating, intellect of James Wharton must be even more intimidating when you are in the same room as him. On 30 September 2022, board members had to deal with all that and more.
With a lot going on in the wider life of the United Kingdom, our favourite current English higher education regulator based in Stoke Gifford had to balance reacting to events (the death of Queen Elizabeth II, whatever it was that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were trying to do, Andrea Jenkyns as universities minister) with pursuing long-held agendas on quality and standards. But how did they get on?
