The Office for Students (OfS) opened a short consultation in March 2023 on how it proposes to determine the fee that a provider will be charged when it is under investigation.
The Higher Education (Investigation Fees) (England) Regulations 2022, which came into effect on 8 December 2022, gave the OfS the power to charge a registered higher education provider a fee in order to recover the cost of conducting an investigation into that provider’s activities.
The consultation set out the proposed approach in determing when to charge such a fee, and how to calculate the extent of the costs incurred.
Our response
We focused our response on a few areas:
- recognising the impact of costs on the student experience
- greater accountability and transparency in deciding to charge a fee
- clarification around indicative fee levels and timetables
- protecting micro providers
- use of third party contractors
Read our full response using the download link below.