Free speech complaints

Before you submit a complaint, you should check your eligibility, including whether:

• you are an eligible person to make a complaint through this scheme
• the university or college is on our Register (or it is a constituent institution of a university or college on our Register)
• the matter is within the scope of the free speech complaints scheme.

The scheme rules contain full details of eligibility and how we will process your complaint.

You or your nominated representative will need to complete the template complaint form.

Download our free speech complaints form

When you complete the form, we will ask for:

• confirmation of whether you are 18 or over
• contact information
• details of your representative (if relevant)
• the organisation you are complaining about and your relation to it
• when the events took place
• whether you have raised the matter through other complaints processes
• whether court or tribunal proceedings relating to the same subject matter as your complaint have or are being dealt with by a court or tribunal
• details of your complaint and any supporting information.

You may also submit an additional optional diversity questionnaire, though this is not mandatory.

If you have reasonable adjustments, please email [email protected] to discuss how we can support you.

You or your nominated representative should send the completed complaints form to [email protected] or via post to:

Office for Students
Westward House
Lime Kiln Close
Stoke Gifford
Bristol
BS34 8SR.

We’ll check your complaint against the eligibility criteria. If we think your complaint is out of scope for the scheme, we’ll let you know why.

If you think we have made a mistake, you can ask us to reconsider the decision by emailing [email protected] explaining why you believe this.

How we review the complaint can vary, but we would usually ask the university or college to respond in writing within 14 days.

In some circumstances, we might give the institution further time, ask for additional information and evidence, seek a meeting with the institution, or seek additional input from independent experts.

You will also normally have a chance to read and respond to their response before we make our decision.

After reviewing the complaint, we will make a provisional decision. The possible decisions are that the complaint is:

• justified
• partly justified
• not justified.

If it appears to the OfS that:

• it is more likely than not that the institution has breached, or is breaching, its free speech duty; and
• it is more likely than not that you have suffered adverse consequences, that are more than minor or trivial, as a result of the breach

then we will determine that your free speech complaint is justified.

If it appears to the OfS that:

• it is more likely than not that the institution has breached, or is breaching, its free speech duty; and
• it is more likely than not that you have not suffered adverse consequences or have suffered only minor or trivial adverse consequences as a result of the breach

then we will determine that your free speech complaint is partly justified.

If it appears to the OfS that it is more likely than not that the respondent is not breaching and has not breached its free speech duty, we will conclude that your complaint is not justified.

Our provisional decision will also include:

• any recommendations we intend to make to the institution
• whether we intend to publish the outcome
• whether we intend to recover costs.

You will have the opportunity to make representations on our provisional decision.

Once we have reached a decision we will write to you and the institution you are complaining about.

We will set out our decision in a formal notice, called the 'Notice of complaint outcome'.

If we find the complaint wholly or partly justified, we may make recommendations to the institution.

These may include a recommendation that the organisation pays the person making the complaint a sum of money.

We would normally expect to publish the outcome of a complaint, including the name of the institution you are complaining about.

We would not normally expect to publish the name of any individual. However, it may be possible to infer individuals’ identities from the information that we publish.