Case Summaries

A PhD student complained to their provider about the conduct of a member of staff at their department Christmas party. She said the staff member had behaved inappropriately toward her, made unwanted comments and touched her without her consent. The provider sent the student its formal response to her complaint, which said the complaint had been dealt with under its HR procedures.

The student submitted a request for a review raising concerns about the way her complaint had been dealt with because she was not given any information about how the HR procedure operated or what conclusions had been reached. She also complained that not enough had been done to manage shared working spaces, and because of this she had an unexpected encounter with the staff member which had caused her distress, affected her mental health and impacted on her studies.

The provider upheld the student’s request for review and offered her a further meeting with the head of the relevant school. The provider sent the student some further information which included a summary of the case considered under its HR procedures. It confirmed the staff member had been found to have committed serious misconduct and that they were subject to a 12-month warning. It also said it would appoint a liaison officer to support the student going forward.

The student was unhappy with the outcome of her complaint to the provider and complained to us. We upheld the student’s complaint (we decided it was Justified) because the provider’s final decision didn’t properly address the shortcomings in its handling of the case.

Although a finding of serious misconduct had been made, the provider had not considered the impact of the staff member’s conduct on the student, nor offered her a remedy. We also thought that the provider could have done more to manage contact between the student and staff member and should have explicitly considered the impact of not having done so.

There had been significant delays at both the formal and review stage of the complaints procedure which had caused the student further distress. There was no evidence to show that the provider had kept the student informed about the likely timescales involved or given them any ongoing support or updates about the status of their complaint during the lengthy HR process.

Taking account of the time that had elapsed, we did not think that asking the provider to reconsider the student’s complaint would be helpful. We recommended the provider offer the student £4,000 in compensation for the issues identified above. We also recommended that the provider should conduct a senior level review to identify how improvements could be made to the way it responds to student complaints about staff misconduct.