Two weeks on from the launch of the OfS Free Speech Complaints Scheme, CAF research has found that most Russell Group universities are ignoring the regulator’s instructions to advertise it properly – leaving academics to discover for themselves that the handling of free-speech and academic-freedom disputes can ultimately be challenged before an independent regulator able to recommend remedies including compensation.
The scheme forms part of the new statutory framework created by the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (HEFSA), which amended the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA). Since 1 August 2025, section A1 of HERA has required governing bodies of registered higher education providers to take “reasonably practicable steps” to secure freedom of speech within the law. Section A2 requires them to maintain a code of practice designed to facilitate compliance with those duties, while section A3 imposes a separate duty to promote the importance of freedom of speech within the law and academic freedom in higher education.
HEFSA also inserted section 69C and Schedule 6A into HERA, requiring the OfS to operate a new free-speech complaints scheme. In April, the Government announced that it would open on 1 September, allowing staff, applicants for academic posts, visiting speakers and non-student members to complain to the regulator where they believe a university has breached its free-speech duties.
In that context, the requirement to publicise the scheme could hardly be described as an administrative nicety. The OfS rules implementing Schedule 6A state that, “as soon as reasonably practicable after 1 September 2026”, universities should advertise the scheme “in a prominent place” in documents including their freedom of speech codes of practice and disciplinary, complaints, appeals and grievance procedures.
CAF therefore reviewed the freedom of speech codes of practice and associated complaints material published by all 20 English Russell Group universities, asking a simple question: do they actually tell staff and other eligible complainants that the new OfS scheme exists?
Only 7 of 20 universities (35%) currently provide clear and accurate signposting to the complaints scheme. Ten (50%) appear to provide no meaningful signposting at all, while a further three (15%) provide information that is inaccurate, outdated or seriously misplaced.
At LSE, for instance, the current Code still contains the placeholder “Free Speech Complaints Procedure – [To be added once guidance provided]”. Elsewhere, Newcastle’s Code says nothing, while its freedom-of-speech website says the University is “awaiting further details” of a scheme that has now been operating for nearly two weeks. Nottingham is similarly out of date, with its published material still stating that “it is not known when the UK government will seek to bring into force the OfS complaints scheme”, and adding that the Code will be updated when “more information on this is available”.
Can the commencement date really have escaped the notice of so many institutions? The then Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, told Parliament on 20 April – five months ago – that the OfS scheme would come into force on 1 September, while the regulator published its final scheme rules on 5 August.
At Liverpool, meanwhile, the Code makes no mention of the scheme. The only explicit reference we found was buried in an undergraduate and taught postgraduate assessment-appeals procedure, where it incorrectly tells students that they are eligible to use it. Students are in fact excluded from the scheme and continue to have access to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.
CAF also reviewed the staff grievance and disciplinary arrangements of all 20 English Russell Group universities. Of the 37 procedures we could verify, only five (13.5%) currently advertise the new OfS route.
The omissions are sometimes difficult to explain as simple unfamiliarity with the new free-speech regime. Sheffield has updated its disciplinary procedure to incorporate the new free-speech duties. UCL’s grievance and disciplinary procedures both contain dedicated provisions on freedom of speech and academic freedom, but neither points staff to the OfS.
Southampton follows a similar pattern. Its Code specifically tells staff who believe the University has infringed their free-speech rights to use its grievance procedure. Yet that procedure says nothing about the OfS scheme – including in the sections dealing with outcomes and appeals, precisely where an unsuccessful complainant might expect to be told what further avenues are available.
York’s approach is perhaps the strangest we found, suggesting a worrying misunderstanding of what the scheme is actually there to do. The institution has found space to advertise it, but in its redundancy procedure, not in either its grievance or disciplinary policies.
Presumably this is an oversight, rather than a tacit admission that York expects to terminate contracts whenever academics express lawful opinions on campus. Either way, the scheme is not simply a remedy for academics who have lost, or are about to lose, their jobs. It covers “adverse consequences” arising from a much wider range of acts or omissions affecting academics who remain very much employed, as well as other eligible complainants such as visiting speakers.
Might it be argued that formal policy changes take time, particularly where documents need to be reviewed by legal teams and approved through university committees? Perhaps. Although Cambridge rather neatly undermines that defence. While its underlying grievance and disciplinary arrangements are still under review, it has nonetheless added an interim notice to its existing “Disciplinary action, grievances and appeals” HR page explaining the OfS Free Speech Complaints Scheme. A wholesale policy rewrite is therefore hardly a prerequisite for telling staff that the new route exists.
Separately, we reviewed the universities’ Report + Support portals, which form part of the institutional architecture through which university communities are encouraged to raise concerns such as bullying, harassment and discrimination. They offer a revealing test of which kinds of institutional harm universities have chosen to make readily reportable. None of the 20 portals we examined signposted the new OfS scheme. In some ways, however, that is not even the most revealing finding. More than a year after the new statutory free-speech duties came into force, most of these reporting systems still do not recognise restrictions on freedom of speech or academic freedom as a reportable institutional concern at all.
Only two of the 20 universities (10%) – King’s College London and Sheffield – explicitly included restrictions on free speech or expression as a reporting category. King’s allows users to select “My Freedom of Expression has been limited”, while Sheffield offers “My Freedom of Speech has been limited”. Bristol came closest among the rest, with a general category for a “Breach of the provisions of any University code, rule or regulation”, which could encompass its free-speech rules but does not identify free speech or academic freedom.
Elsewhere, the reporting architecture suggested a worryingly one-sided understanding of what “freedom of speech within the law” requires.
Leeds, for instance, invites reports of “microaggressions”, including unintentional “commonplace” slights, but provides no category for restrictions on lawful speech.
At Warwick, there was no free-speech reporting category, while a question covering the Equality Act 2010 characteristic of “religion or belief” individually listed religions but provided no equivalent category for protected philosophical beliefs, even though qualifying philosophical beliefs – including gender-critical belief, opposition to critical race theory and anti-Zionism – fall within the same protected characteristic.
Nottingham goes further. A section of its website titled “Free speech and academic freedom” appears to offer no route at all for someone who believes the University has infringed their own free-speech or academic-freedom rights. Under the heading “Reporting issues relating to freedom of speech and academic freedom”, users are told: “If you believe that an individual is engaging in speech that is prohibited by law,” they should report it to a dedicated email address. Directly below, staff are directed to the Report + Support portal if they “have witnessed or experienced harassment” or “are concerned that a person may be being drawn into terrorism”.
When it comes to securing “freedom of speech within the law”, as required by HEFSA, this is the institutional equivalent of “heads I win, tails you lose”. Both available routes are framed around the perceived dangers posed by speech, while neither presents the converse possibility that the University itself may have infringed a user’s free-speech or academic-freedom rights.
Beyond the issue of advertising the OfS complaints scheme, it shouldn’t go unremarked that there are genuine, albeit sporadic, signs of improvement. Oxford, for instance, has undertaken an unusually thorough overhaul of its governance arrangements, requiring bodies dealing with grievances, EDI, research ethics, employment and redundancy to consider whether their decisions could directly or indirectly affect lawful freedom of speech, and to record how they have given particular regard to it. Bristol too has built freedom of speech and academic freedom into its complaints architecture, with a dedicated procedure for staff and students and a specific section explaining when staff can take a case from the University’s grievance process to the OfS Free Speech Complaints Scheme.
Nevertheless, the overall picture is one of remarkable institutional indifference to making the new free-speech protections practically usable and enforceable.
Why does this matter? Because the scheme will only be as effective as the cases that reach it. If the pipeline is restricted from the outset because the route is poorly advertised, then quite apart from the impact on individual academics, there is a wider sectoral danger that the university lobby will soon start pointing to low complaint numbers as evidence that there was never much of a campus free-speech problem in the first place, and that the scheme is an unnecessary waste of money.
No doubt universities themselves will argue that, because the scheme only applies to action or inaction taking place on or after 1 September, and the OfS will normally wait until any relevant internal process has concluded or 90 days have elapsed, there is no great rush.
But would that attitude be considered acceptable in almost any other area of rights protection? Is it really possible to imagine a Russell Group university taking the same approach to new requirements under, say, an amended Public Sector Equality Duty – either as they appeared in statute or as a charity such as Stonewall chose to render them in its university-facing guidance? As with anyone who has a right of recourse to an external regulator or ombudsman, academics need to know from the outset that a university’s handling of a free-speech or academic-freedom dispute may ultimately be challenged before an independent regulator.
Whether this lackadaisical attitude towards free speech among senior university administrators continues beyond 1 January remains to be seen. But the widespread failure to advertise the scheme so far hardly suggests a sector eager to make it easy for academics to take its own decisions and judgments outside the institution for independent scrutiny.
CAF reviewed publicly available materials at all 20 English Russell Group universities as at 14 September 2026. The findings are a snapshot and policies may subsequently be updated.