Case Summaries

Student A told their personal tutor that they had been sexually assaulted by another student on their course, student B. The personal tutor shared this information with the course team. Student A made a report to the police, and later submitted a formal complaint to the provider about student B’s conduct. The provider suspended student B as a precautionary measure and said it would consider whether student B had breached its disciplinary regulations by sexual misconduct. The procedures were placed on hold pending the outcome of the police investigation.

Student A later made a second formal complaint to the provider specifically about the actions it had taken after her disclosure. She said that the provider had not explained her options clearly enough, in that she had thought she could not complain formally to the provider about Student B until the police had spoken to him. She said the provider had delayed in sending information that the police had asked for and she was dissatisfied with how long it took the provider to suspend Student B. She also complained about the way the course leader had responded to the disclosure, which she had not found to be supportive.

The provider partly upheld the student’s complaint. It said it had responded promptly to the police’s request and didn’t uphold this part of the complaint. The provider also dismissed the complaint about delay in suspending the student, explaining that it couldn’t suspend student B until it had received a formal complaint, or until a police investigation had been initiated. The provider acknowledged the course leader hadn’t offered equal support to both students A and B, and that the department’s actions could be described as a series of reactive responses rather than following a structured course of action. It decided the course leader’s actions hadn’t been deliberate and highlighted a training need. The provider accepted the course leader’s actions were likely to have caused the student some distress.

The provider acknowledged that there had been some delays in responding to the student’s complaint and offered £500 compensation for this.

The student was unhappy with the outcome and complained to us. We partly upheld the complaint (we decided it was Partly Justified).

It was appropriate for the provider to consider the complaint from student A about how it had responded to her disclosure and subsequent complaint about student B under its student complaints procedure. But we were not satisfied that the provider considered appropriate evidence or clearly explained its conclusions. For example, the provider could have explained more clearly why there had been a two-month gap between the date of the initial request for information by the police, and the date the information was received by the police. This was because the original information was not legible, but the police did not tell the provider this for two months.

The provider’s statement that it could not consider a precautionary suspension based on the initial disclosure until there had been a formal complaint or police action didn’t properly reflect the discretion available to the provider under its precautionary suspension procedures. There was no evidence to show whether the provider had considered taking any precautionary action following the student’s initial disclosure.

The provider had not taken any steps to investigate Student A’s complaint that the initial disclosure process had been confusing, for example by checking what advice she had been given about its procedures. And although it had acknowledged that the department’s response to Student A’s disclosure had not been appropriate, it had not considered the impact of this upon the student or offered her a remedy.

We did not uphold the part of the complaint relating to delay, because the provider had already acknowledged and made an appropriate offer of compensation to address this. We recommended that it repeat this offer.

We also recommended that the provider apologise for the issues we’d identified with its handling of the complaint and offer the student an additional £2,000 as compensation for the significant distress the student had experienced. We made a good practice Recommendation for the provider to review its complaint handling processes and we also recommended that it review its precautionary suspension procedure and conduct refresher training for staff on its operation.