Harassment and sexual misconduct: information provision to the governing body

Responsibility and accountability

The governing body is responsible and accountable for a university’s compliance with its legal and regulatory obligations in respect of harassment and sexual misconduct affecting university students and staff.

Exercise of oversight and scrutiny

Fundamental to robust and effective governance is the exercise of oversight and scrutiny by the governing body of its university’s arrangements, practices and processes in respect of the prevention of and response to harassment and sexual misconduct.  Where the university is registered with the Office for Students, the Board will also need to consider the university’s preparedness to comply with new OfS registration Condition E6 when it comes fully into force on 1 August 2025.

Provision and evaluation of information

Governors’ collective judgment on the university’s legal and regulatory compliance should be evidence-based. This will entail governors regularly receiving information relating (for example) to reporting and prevalence data, outcomes of investigations and panel cases, and information on themes and trends. It should also include hearing from students and staff about their experiences of harassment and sexual misconduct.

The receipt and evaluation of data and other information by the governing body is addressed by the Committee of University Chairs (CUC) and also by the Office for Students. For example: 

CUC

The CUC 'Tackling Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Guidance for Chairs and Governing Bodies' (May 2022) considers that the governing body’s routine requesting of “information on prevalence (including trend analysis) and…reported incidents and outcomes of cases” represents “good governance practice”. 

The CUC guidance highlights the importance of the governing body “getting assurance by requesting regular reports on the university’s commitments to tackling [the agenda of harassment and sexual misconduct], such as data on trends and outcomes of all forms of harassment”, including (the guidance suggests):

• action taken in response to formal reports and complaints;
• the effectiveness of prevention and response activities;
• the impact on students; and
• the allocation of resources to prevent and address staff and student sexual misconduct.

OfS

The OfS guidance which accompanies new Condition E6 also identifies the role that the collection, monitoring and publication of data can play in informing “effective action to protect students from behaviour that may amount to harassment and/or sexual misconduct”.

This (the guidance explains) may include:

• data relating to the prevalence of harassment and/or sexual misconduct affecting students
  and
• data about reporting, such as:
  o    the number and type of incidents reported to the provider;
  o    how many of these lead to an investigation; and
  o    the outcomes from incidents and investigations.

Reflection

Accordingly, governors may wish to reflect upon the regularity with which the governing body receives information and on the nature of that information and its evaluation by governors.