ANNUAL REPORT 2025 - Improving what we do

In 2025 we continued to focus on making sure that service users are at the centre of our casework process.

A core aim of our Strategic Review was that processes are efficient and centred on effective resolution and remedy. Throughout 2025, and in the context of an increasing number of complaints, we continued this essential work, helping to shape an increasingly accessible and easy to navigate service for our users , whilst also ensuring that we remain agile and responsive in how we process complaints.

We made further progress in the timeliness of our casework, with more than 90% of complaints closed within six months and average case handling time reduced to 81 days, while also handling record volumes of complaints.

Alongside this, we continued to strengthen the support available to students navigating our Scheme, with a focus on making our processes clearer and easier to engage with in practice. We also used learning from complaints more deliberately, sharing insight with providers, SRBS and wider sector partners so that individual cases could contribute to broader improvement across the sector.

We also undertook an accessibility and inclusion review to inform the development of our work. The review provided internally focused, evidence-based insight into how students experience our processes, communications, and digital services, and identified a number of themes to help shape our next phase of improvement.

These themes include strengthening the clarity and accessibility of our information, further developing the student-facing experience of our digital channels, and undertaking an update to our website and social media content so that our external communications are clearer, more accessible and more inclusive for the people who use them.

This work will form part of a broader programme of service improvement as we continue to embed accessibility more consistently across the organisation including as part of our refreshed Communications Strategy.

Student Feedback

Feedback from students is very valuable to us and informs so many of the developments we continue to make in what we do. We continued to invite feedback from students in 2025, along with gathering helpful insights from the students who took part in our student discussion groups and our more general engagement with students during our process.

Some students are very satisfied with our service, with a high proportion of those who respond to our surveys saying that we have treated them with respect and politeness. Others express concerns, most commonly around understanding our processes and decisions, the extent and nature of our remit, and perception of a lack of impartiality. We are continuing to improve how we explain what we can and cannot do, both in the general information for students and within individual cases. We have also considered what students have said to us about their perceptions of what independence and impartiality mean and fed this into our strategic review work.

Students who are unhappy with the service we have provided while we are handling their complaint can make a complaint. The complaints we receive about our service, as well as being an opportunity to put things right if they have gone wrong, can also help us to deepen our understanding of how students might experience our process and how we can further improve our service. This is an important part of our ongoing strategic work to put service users at the heart of what we do. In 2025, we received 63 service complaints, compared to 45 in 2024. While this is a significant increase on 2024, this sits within a broader increase in overall case numbers.

We are reviewing the way in which we communicate with students, particularly when we may be delivering a disappointing decision and/or communicating with a vulnerable student. We also feed in learning to make sure that students can engage more easily with our process. 

Some of the complaints we received raised issues about the merits of the student’s complaint about their provider, but we cannot consider those issues under our service complaints procedure. Where appropriate, we will sometimes explain our approach and signpost the student to the appropriate route for raising these types of concerns about their case or a decision.

Legal challenges to our decisions

Our case decisions can be challenged by judicial review. Judicial review cases often provide useful learning and insights for us, we value reflections from judges on our decisions and processes. Even when permission for a judicial review is not granted by a judge, we sometimes identify ways we can improve our processes and service.

During 2025 we received a total of 14 new judicial review claims, compared with 13 in 2024 and 10 in 2023. The number of pre-action protocol letters received in 2025 was 36. In 2024 we received 27 pre-action protocol letters, and in 2023 we received 12. The court has refused to grant permission for a judicial review in respect of three of the claims received in 2025, two claims were discontinued by the Claimant whilst awaiting a court decision, one is awaiting the court’s approval following settlement agreed with the student to discontinue the claim, and we are waiting for the court to reach a decision in respect of the other eight claims.

We continue to see a trend of increased numbers of students who engage in the judicial review processes without legal representation. These matters can present additional challenges for us when responding. We recognise that the costs involved in litigation can be significant. We make every effort to keep our costs low, but we also have a responsibility to recover the costs we incur when successfully defending claims that are made against us.