Burman Bulletin: Week of 17 August

From 1 September, university staff, academic job applicants, visiting speakers and a few other non-student groups will get a brand new way to complain if they think their free speech has been shut down: a direct route to the Office for Students. It's part of the long-running Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, and the rules for how it'll actually work only landed a couple of weeks ago.

The headline points: the scheme opens 1 September, and staff (including academics and applicants for academic posts), visiting speakers and others including emeritus professors will be able to complain to the OfS if they believe their free speech rights have been infringed. Students aren't covered, they stay with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, which already handles wider student complaints. It's also not retrospective, so only things that happen from September onwards count, and complaints generally need to be submitted within 12 months unless there's good reason for the delay.

There's a sharper edge to this too. From April 2027, the OfS gets new powers to actually fine providers over free speech breaches, up to £500,000 or 2% of income, whichever is higher. That's a serious number for any institution, and it's landing at a moment when the regulator's own approach is already shifting: the rules were revised in direct response to the University of Sussex case, where the High Court ruled the OfS had acted unlawfully in fining Sussex £585,000 over its handling of the Kathleen Stock affair.

Why should PS teams care? Because in practice, free speech complaints rarely start with lawyers, they start with HR, governance, student conduct, events booking, or whoever manages a room-hire request that suddenly becomes political. From September, those everyday decisions carry a new layer of regulatory risk, and expect institutions to be updating policies, training and event-approval processes fast to keep up.

References:

• Office for Students, OfS publishes rules and updates guidance ahead of freedom of speech complaints scheme launch (5 August 2026)

• Times Higher Education, OfS softens free speech approach as complaints scheme nears