The OIA is not an emergency remedy Scheme, and it can take several months to complete our process. We consistently receive a high demand for our service. As such, and in fairness to everyone that brings a complaint to us, we generally deal with complaints in the order in which we receive them.
Based on the information we receive, we may use our discretion at any point during our process to prioritise a complaint and we will let you know if we have done so.
Requests from students for prioritisation of a complaint can only be considered where there are exceptional reasons to do so. This means that commonly shared reasons for wanting a complaint to be dealt with quickly won’t be accepted.
Examples of priority requests that we do not consider exceptional are:
- I want to continue or complete my studies quickly.
- I want to know if my grades will be impacted.
- I want to apply for study elsewhere.
- I want to apply for a job.
- There is a time limit for me to take legal action against my provider.
- The provider delayed my case, and so I have already been waiting a long time.
- I don’t know whether to opt out of or retaking assessments. (We encourage students to protect their academic position while a complaint is ongoing).
- My student route visa has been withdrawn, and I have been told to leave the UK. (There is no requirement to be in the UK for us to consider your complaint. If appropriate, your circumstances will be taken into account when we complete our review).
- Financial hardship.
If we have not already prioritised a complaint, we may decide to do so where a student can evidence, for example, that there is an external time limit for their course to be completed (e.g. on a Medicine course). Or where we are provided with appropriate evidence that a student’s health condition or disability is being impacted by the length of our process. Or, where a student can evidence that they have a definite job offer, or offer to study, which is conditional on the outcome of our review and has a time limit.
If you have a complaint with us and you have evidence of an exceptional reason for us to consider prioritising your case, you can email this and your evidence to casework@oiahe.org.uk quoting your reference number.
To be clear, however, even complaints that we decide to prioritise cannot be dealt with immediately. Prioritised complaints will also generally be dealt with in the order we receive them. When coming to us, students must bear in mind that our process requires time to allocate complaints to a case handler and time for the case handler to complete our review.