Government strengthens Prevent oversight in higher education: Legal comment

The UK Government has announced a package of measures aimed at strengthening how universities meet their Prevent duty – the legal obligation to take action to prevent students from being drawn into terrorism or radicalised.

Central to the new measures is a proposal to enable the Office for Students (OfS) being a formal whistleblowing body for registered higher education providers, allowing university staff to report concerns about non-compliance directly to the OfS if they feel unable to raise them internally.

The measures form part of the government's wider Social Cohesion Action Plan and sit alongside a proposal to co-design a Campus Cohesion Charter with students.

Universities are already monitored by the OfS for compliance with the Prevent duty and many providers prepare annual action plans relating to this. The OfS guidance has been issued to help institutions manage external speakers and events where free speech may cross into unlawful activity or support for terrorism.

What’s new in the announcement? 

Trish D’Souza, Legal Director in the higher education team at UK and Ireland law firm Browne Jacobson, said: “The Prevent duty itself is not new, having been implemented as part of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, so institutions are already used to being monitored for compliance.

“What is new here is the whistleblowing mechanism, which would allow staff to report their own institution directly to the OfS if they believe it is failing to meet its legal obligations. That is a significant shift in the enforcement landscape and one that universities will need to take seriously.

“This announcement comes against the backdrop of data showing that Prevent referrals increased by more than a quarter in the year to November 2025, reflecting both rising risks and greater efforts to identify those who may be vulnerable to radicalisation.

Weighing up competing priorities for universities

“The tension at the heart of this policy is that Universities are being asked to root out extremism while at the same time being required to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom, protect religious expression, and avoid discriminatory practices.

“Where decisions to restrict or no-platform speakers are made on Prevent grounds, those decisions will inevitably intersect with freedom of speech obligations, raising questions about how the OfS will weigh competing duties. We have already seen from the OfS's approach to the Freedom of Speech Act – where it exercised its powers swiftly and with significant financial consequence against the University of Sussex – that the regulator is not reluctant to intervene. Institutions would be unwise to assume this new whistleblowing mechanism will be used sparingly.

“The practical risk of getting this wrong could be that if higher education providers are perceived to be insufficiently robust, they face regulatory sanction. The sector should also be alert to the fact that hate crime and religious discrimination claims are on the rise, and we expect this area to grow further, fuelled by the current political climate and the ongoing impact of global conflicts on campus communities.

“The message for the sector is clear: compliance cannot be treated as a tick-box exercise. Institutions should review their Prevent frameworks now, ensure they have robust internal reporting channels, and think carefully about how they would respond to a whistleblowing referral made to the OfS. This is fertile ground for disputes – and the sector needs to be prepared.”