The basics

Our members

Section 11 of the Higher Education Act 2004 defines those providers, known as “qualifying institutions”, which are required to be members.

The letter we sent to your provider when it joined our Scheme explains why and when it was brought into membership. Some providers have been members since our Scheme began.

Students can complain to us about anything a provider did or didn't do from the date it became a member of our Scheme, as long as the complaint is one we can look at under our Rules.

If you can't find your provider's membership letter, or if you have any questions about your provider's membership of our Scheme, please email membership@oiahe.org.uk.

How we keep in touch

We ask each provider to nominate a Point of Contact for us to deal with. A Point of Contact’s main role is to liaise with us about individual complaints and to respond to our requests for information. We recommend that providers also nominate a Point of Contact Delegate who will be able to help us if the Point of Contact isn't available for any reason.

We create a MyOIA account for each member provider. When we know who will be acting as our Point of Contact we will send them login details for the provider's account. Providers can use MyOIA to track complaints, manage contact details and add other users. Existing members of our Scheme can use MyOIA to let us know about any changes to the Point of Contact or Point of Contact Delegate.

As a provider Point of Contact or Delegate, we will send you a regular update – our Update for Points of Contact – which will include important information and reminders specifically for Points of Contact. You will receive this automatically via email. Please make sure to take time to read these updates.

We also publish e-newsletters include more general updates about our work. Please check that your email settings allow these to come through to your inbox. We send the e-newsletters to Points of Contact and Point of Contact Delegates automatically, but any other staff who are interested in receiving them can also subscribe via our website.

TOOLKIT FOR PROVIDERS - The basics

The basics