Casework note: Service issues including consumer rights
We describe a significant proportion of the complaints we receive from students as complaints about service issues. The complaints are often about the student’s experience of their course and raise issues such as teaching, course delivery, supervision, and course-related facilities. Sometimes the complaints are about non-course service issues that relate to the wider student experience, for example accommodation run by the provider, parking, or the provision of welfare services like careers guidance and advice. We draw a distinction between complaints about course-based service issues and non-course service issues when we report on complaints in our Annual Reports. We also have a separate category for complaints about financial issues, such as fees and funding.
Many of the complaints we see involve a gap between what was promised or what the student had expected, and what was actually delivered. Students form their expectations of their higher education experience in many different ways, so we will sometimes need to consider whether the student’s own expectations were reasonable. We can consider information that was made available to the student before they accepted an offer to study at the provider, including on prospectuses, websites and at open days.
As an ombuds body we look at what the provider has done, or not done, whether it has followed fair procedures, and whether it has acted reasonably in all the circumstances. Some complaints about service issues may involve a student’s consumer rights. We don’t make legally binding decisions about individuals’ rights, and we look more widely than the strict terms of any contractual arrangements. But we do consider consumer legislation and relevant guidance to help us form our view on whether the provider acted reasonably. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has produced guidance on how consumer protection law applies to the higher education sector, and we may refer to it in our Complaint Outcomes and our Recommendations. As set out within the CMA’s guidance, providers need to make material information available to applicants that will enable them to make an informed decision about which course to study, including information about the total course costs. This information needs to be accurate, clear, unambiguous, timely and easily accessible. A provider’s ability to deliver what was promised, or what could reasonably have been expected, may be affected by industrial action or other significant disruption.
Where something has gone wrong or the provider didn’t deliver what was promised, or what the student could reasonably have expected, the provider will need to think about how to put things right for the student. In some of the complaints we have seen the provider upheld or partly upheld the complaint under its internal procedures, but it didn’t offer the student a remedy or the remedy offered didn’t go far enough to put things right for the individual student. Dealing with complaints about service issues promptly and effectively means the provider is more likely to be able to identify suitable practical remedies at an early stage. Unfortunately, in some of the complaints we have seen the issues the student experienced were compounded by delays in the provider’s internal procedures. Good practice guidance for providers on handling complaints is available within our Good Practice Framework. Our own approach to remedies is set out within our guidance on putting things right.
Service issues including consumer rights
Learning from our casework for complaints relating to service issues including consumer rights