Complaints

The university encourages you to try to raise any issues with the member of staff concerned. If you don't feel you can do this, or if you're unhappy with the outcome, you can submit a complaint under the formal stages.

Every department and School has at least one Early Resolution Officer (ERO) to handle complaints within their department. This stage is designed to give a quick outcome for simple cases, and for most complaints, you are expected to start the formal process at this stage. If you believe it would not be appropriate to submit an ERO complaint, you may be able to start your complaint at the next stage, but you do need to justify skipping this step.

To submit an Early Resolution complaint, email the ERO at the relevant department/School ERO email address, which you can find listed on the university's Complaints page in the 'Early Resolution' section. If you're not sure which email address to use you can email complaints@keele.ac.uk, who will pass it on to the correct person. 

Postgraduate Research students with a complaint about their course should email the general complaints@keele.ac.uk email address and the complaint will be passed on.

At this stage you do not need to fill in a form; just email full details of what happened and what outcome you are asking for, remembering to include your full name and student number.

You can submit a formal complaint if you are unhappy with the outcome of the ERO complaint or are able to justify missing that stage. This stage is more thorough and can take several months to resolve your complaint but it will be investigated by someone outside the School/department so you would get a more independent decision.

You must fill in a formal complaint form, which you can find on the university's Complaints page, and send it to the Complaints team at complaints@keele.ac.uk. A full outline of the complaint process, including allocating an investigator and what to expect when you submit a complaint, is also available on that page.

You can submit a grievance if you're unhappy with the outcome of your formal complaint, but you must have grounds. These are:

• There was a procedural irregularity prior to or in the conduct of the complaint investigation.
• There is new evidence that can be substantiated, including exceptional circumstances, which was not known at the time, and may have affected the outcome had it been known and that there is a valid reason for not making it known at the time.

If you don't meet these grounds you could still complain to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) - please see the next stage.

A grievance must be submitted within 14 calendar days of the date on the formal complaint outcome letter. You must use the appropriate grievance form and submit the form to grievances@keele.ac.uk. Information about grievances, along with the form, is available on the university's Grievance Complaints page.

The OIA runs a free complaints scheme and is independent from the university; the university must abide by its decisions in full. Their website has information about complaining. You must have a Completion of Procedures letter from the University before you can take your case to the OIA.

If you're not satisfied with your complaint outcome but don't have grounds for a grievance you can request a Completion of Procedures letter from the university and take your case to the OIA.

If you submit a grievance and are not satisfied with the outcome you can also take your case to the OIA. You will be sent a Completion of Procedures letter along with your grievance outcome so there is no need to request it.

If you have been affected by the strikes, here are some steps you can take to strengthen a complaint:

• Record Keeping: Keep a detailed record of what you have missed due to the industrial action, such as teaching, supervision, access to university facilities and services. Explain in your complaint how missing each of these has impacted you and your studies.
• Evidence: If you have lost out on any money or entitlement, keep receipts so you can provide them as evidence. For example, if you had a notetaker scheduled for a lecture that was cancelled at short notice, you may have had to pay for the service even though the lecture did not occur, or you may have unnecessarily used up some of your DSA hours. If you were given wrong information, or a class was cancelled at the last minute, keep any written evidence of this (such as emails or Teams messages).
• University Mitigation Efforts: Consider whether the university has taken steps to compensate for the strikes. For instance, if you missed a class, has the School provided alternative learning formats, such as recordings of previous classes?
• Accessibility: If the university has provided alternative arrangements, assess whether your needs have been met. If you have a disability, consider whether the alternative arrangements have been more detrimental to you compared to able-bodied students.

You may also want to consider how the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) might view the university's actions. The OIA is an independent body set up to review student complaints, and you can take your case to them once you've gone through the University's internal complaints process, so their case summaries are useful to read through when working on your complaint - see below for more information about this.

The OIA has guidance on what they would look for if a student complained to them. They will review what the university promised in its contract and promotional materials, and what students could reasonably expect in terms of contact hours and learning opportunities. They will then assess whether the university has met those expectations and whether suitable alternatives were provided during the strike. If the university failed to meet expectations, the OIA will consider whether the university made any efforts to mitigate the disruption.

The OIA has published some real-life case summaries, so you can see some examples of cases and their outcomes. Several complaints against universities have been upheld in the past because the university hadn't made up for lost learning opportunities. This is a quote from one case summary as an example:

We decided the University had taken appropriate steps to minimise the academic impact of the industrial action. However, it had not taken any steps to make up for the lost teaching hours and the learning opportunities they represented. We explained that, in our experience, most students don’t study at higher education providers purely to gain a qualification. Students who expect to learn about a particular subject but who don’t receive the teaching they are supposed to get are not adequately compensated by the provider undertaking not to test them on it. It is reasonable to expect providers to make some attempt to make up for what has been missed, but this doesn’t have to be like-for-like replacement teaching hours.'

Something else they consider is whether an individual student's needs have been met. One case outcome states:

The University had not recognised the individual effect of the industrial action on the student, and had not considered whether it would be reasonable to take further action or to provide additional support because of the student’s individual circumstances. In particular, the University hadn’t thought about giving the student a deadline extension for their other modules so that the deadlines were spaced out; the student had explained at the time that grouping deadlines together was increasing their anxiety.'