What the government’s Social Cohesion Action Plan means for universities and students

Students are to be given “stronger protections” against extremism on campus.

The Office for Students (OfS) is to become a recognised whistleblowing body for staff, allowing them to report in where they feel unable to raise concerns about Prevent duty compliance internally.

Revised guidance on the management of external speakers and events is coming, and a “Campus Cohesion Charter”, to be co-designed with students, will set clearer expectations around conduct, respect and shared values across university life.

It’s all in the Department for Education (DfE)’s section of the government’s wider Social Cohesion Action Plan, which is bringing together steps across government to “strengthen resilience against extremism” and “reinforce shared values across communities”.

The new plan is partly a response to a working group that was established to provide government with a working definition of anti-Muslim hostility, and also builds on previous reviews of the Prevent extremism duty.

DfE says that wider data shows growing pressure on institutions dealing with extremist rhetoric and hate incidents. Prevent referrals have increased over the last year by more than a quarter, reflecting both rising risks and greater efforts to identify and support people who may be vulnerable to radicalisation.

The press release says that the measures aim to ensure universities are places where unlawful behaviour is never tolerated, but where robust debate can take place.

“Prevent” always has been a counterweight on the other end of the free speech see-saw – and it’s very much reasserting itself here.

Continuity dressed as change

Back in February 2023, William Shawcross published his already long-delayed independent review of Prevent – and the then-Conservative government accepted all 34 of his recommendations in full.

At the time, universities and SUs were specifically named, and a whole section of the government’s response was devoted to countering what Shawcross called the “anti-Prevent campaign at universities.”

By February 2024 – per the one-year progress report on Shawcross implementation – 30 of the 34 recommendations had been marked complete. Measures to counter the anti-Prevent campaign at universities included DfE developing a network of over 20 pro-Prevent speakers, funding an organisation called Resilience in Unity to go into universities, and piloting of engagement with student bodies.

A unit to rebut Prevent misinformation was also set up with a dedicated Prevent communications team, and a recommendation on “disrupting chronic radicalisers below the terrorism threshold” was actioned via new Prevent duty guidance placing a “renewed emphasis” on partners reducing permissive environments.

Some of the Action Plan’s language feels new but isn’t. The HE section says universities:

…should not only be alert to violent extremism but also non-violent extremism, including certain divisive or intolerant narratives which can reasonably be linked to terrorism.

That’s lifted almost word for word from paragraph 141 of the existing Prevent statutory guidance, which already says the same thing about education settings. The Action Plan is restating existing obligations while framing them as a step change.

As such, the announcements build on, move on and slightly reframe a wedge of work already in progress.

A tidying exercise with teeth

OfS “strengthening” its monitoring of universities’ Prevent compliance manifested in a letter to providers on March 6th.

Updates will clarify information currently held separately on the website, remove redundant information, update the definition of “Prevent serious incidents,” and use review meetings “to target areas of concern more strategically.”

Online briefing sessions are planned for the summer, and the 2025-26 accountability and data return remains due in December as before. The Action Plan says OfS will “publish a new framework and guidance in September, which will come into force at the start of 2027” – but appears to be the same work dressed up for the actions table.

It very much feels like a minor tidying up exercise designed to add another line to the strategy.

Where universities fail their Prevent duty, DfE is committing to use section 30 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 direction powers, enforceable by court order.

This is a harder edge than the press release’s reference to OfS sanctioning implies – a separate enforcement route sitting directly with DfE, bypassing the OfS conditions of registration process entirely. Section 30 directions have never been used in HE.

The press release talks about the regulator having “powers to sanction or deregister institutions” – but the Action Plan reveals that DfE itself is the enforcement body it has in mind, not OfS.

The see-saw

On external speakers, 2023’s response to the Shawcross recommendation said guidance would come “once the main provisions of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 come into force in August 2024.”

The Prevent duty requires universities to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism” – an obligation that includes tackling what the guidance calls “permissive environments” for radicalisation.

Our old friend “free speech within the law” is the issue here. OfS’ existing free speech guidance follows a three-stage linear process that treats restrictions on speech as an absolute last resort. Universities must first exhaust all reasonably practicable steps to facilitate speech, and can only restrict it if there’s a clear breach of law.

The guidance basically stops universities from jumping ahead to consider whether speech might create harmful environments or undermine other values unless they’ve first demonstrated that no practical steps could enable it. Creating a “permissive environment” is not, in itself, a legal breach that would appear to justify restriction under the OfS framework.

But the Prevent statutory guidance pulls in precisely the opposite direction. It explicitly requires universities to tackle “permissive environments,” encouraging action to limit exposure to radicalising ideologies even where criminality is not yet clear.

The 2018 Salman Butt judicial review – which found that Prevent guidance advising institutions not to allow events where the risk of radicalisation could not be eliminated was unlawful – is a live precedent, so guidance on “permissive environments” will need to be very precise about the legal threshold to avoid rerunning the same problem.

The new external speakers guidance promises to introduce:

…principles to help providers assess when speech might be unlawful as it is likely to amount to a terrorism-related offence or is lawful but could enable a ‘permissive environment’ for radicalising influences.

That’s the Action Plan acknowledging the two categories – unlawful speech and lawful-but-concerning speech – and then declining to say what universities should actually do about the second one. “Principles to help providers assess” is doing a lot of work to avoid saying “rules that tell providers when they can restrict.”

The Shawcross response explicitly said external speakers guidance would come once the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act’s main provisions were in force. Some provisions were then paused by this government, and there’s been no indication of when – or whether – they’ll be commenced. But the main provisions are in place, so it’s not at all clear what’s been holding up the guidance.

The Action Plan resolves the tension by default. It loads up the Prevent end of the see-saw – stronger monitoring, section 30 directions, external speakers guidance, horizon-scanning, a cohesion charter – while the statutory free speech framework that was supposed to provide the counterbalance remains frozen.

And so it’s still clear as mud as to what universities and SUs are supposed to do about anything in the “within the law” / “permissive environment” basket.

The Charter and the watchers

A Campus Cohesion Charter will be “co-designed” with students, setting principles around conduct, extremism, civic participation, environmental responsibility, and shared values – with universities then “strongly encouraged” to incorporate it into their own codes of conduct.

The co-design framing appears to be an attempt to tackle SU/NUS resistance, and the government is hoping participation produces buy-in. But if the output is effectively an instrument for getting student bodies to endorse Prevent, it may well run into trouble.

Also buried in the Action Plan, the Home Office is to establish a dedicated function to identify individuals and events of extremist concern, covering hireable venues, outdoor spaces, charities, campuses, and explicitly “activity by Student Unions and non-affiliated student groups.”

This function was very much in play back in the late 2010s, with Home Office intel on “front societies” for Hizb ut-Tahrir feeding its way through DfE into NUS and into SUs. At the time, concerns about speakers from Hizb ut-Tahrir were often framed around antisemitism and LGBT+ rights. Today, there’s a much tougher weigh-up to be done given the strengthening of the “free speech” end of the see-saw – or rather, what was supposed to be its strengthening.

The Action Plan also says the government will publish an annual State of Extremism report structured around Islamism, the Extreme Right and explicitly the Extreme Left. Combined with the horizon-scanning function covering SU/student society activity, this creates a mechanism for publicly assessing and reporting on student activism as a category of extremism concern – something that will need handling with considerable care given the range of lawful political activity on campuses.

Alongside all of this, the updated “engagement principles” will require that public bodies do not “confer legitimacy, funding or influence on extremist groups.” For universities, that has implications well beyond speaker events – it potentially catches research partnerships, honorary degrees, visiting fellowships, institutional relationships with overseas bodies, and conference hosting arrangements. The due diligence requirements that flow from this could be substantial.

SUs should also note that the Action Plan strengthens Charity Commission powers to suspend trustees and shut down charities, with new discretionary powers to disqualify trustees “engaged in conduct promoting terrorism, violence or hatred.”

The territorial extent is worth noting too. OfS monitoring, the Charter, the complaints portal, and the whistleblowing designation are all England-only. But the Home Office horizon-scanning function covering SU activity would appear to be UK-wide, as are the section 30 direction powers. Scottish and Welsh institutions get the surveillance without the corresponding framework.

Two definitions, one campus

Published alongside the Action Plan is a new non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility – and in drafting terms, it’s strikingly different from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism that has caused so much difficulty on campuses.

The anti-Muslim hostility definition requires intention throughout. Criminal acts “directed at Muslims because of their religion.” Prejudicial stereotyping “with the intention of encouraging hatred.” Unlawful discrimination where conduct “is intended to disadvantage Muslims.” Every limb requires you to establish what the person meant to do. IHRA’s working definition doesn’t require intention – it works through examples of speech that “could, taking into account the overall context” be antisemitic, which is a much lower bar and is why it has often been so contested in university settings.

The definition’s protected expression section is explicit – it lists criticism of Islam, ridiculing or insulting Islam, criticism of individual adherents’ beliefs, raising concerns in the public interest, and “contributing to debates in the public interest, including academic and political debate.” That last carve-out is almost tailor-made for campus application. IHRA has no equivalent.

The notes on use do serious legal defensive work too – emphasising that the definition is non-statutory, doesn’t change what is or isn’t a crime, doesn’t alter the Equality Act, and:

…must not be used in any way that is inconsistent with any part of the law or statutory functions, guidance, or codes of practice.

It even acknowledges that “there is no right to always be protected from offence.” Compatibility with a legal regime focussed squarely on freedom of speech “within the law” feels weak.

For campus application, the pressure dynamics will be familiar – organisations will push for adoption, adoption will be treated as a litmus test for institutional commitment, and the nuances in the accompanying text will risk getting lost in the process.

The deeper tension is between this definition and the rest of the Action Plan. The anti-Muslim hostility definition is tightly drawn with intention thresholds and explicit free speech safeguards. The “permissive environments” concept in the Prevent and HE sections is loosely drawn with no intention threshold and no equivalent safeguards.

The government is publishing both on the same day and apparently hasn’t noticed – or has noticed and doesn’t mind – that they pull in opposite directions on the fundamental question of where the line sits between protected speech and unacceptable conduct on campus.

Complaints, whistleblowing and the visitor

Another policy change will see OfS become a recognised whistleblowing body for registered higher education providers. What this actually means is that DfE will work with the Department for Business and Trade to add OfS to the list of prescribed bodies under the Public Interest Disclosure (Prescribed Persons) Order 2024.

That’s a narrower thing than the press release implies. It doesn’t give OfS new investigatory powers. It means that staff making a disclosure to OfS about wrongdoing at a registered provider would gain the legal protections available under existing whistleblowing legislation – confidentiality, anonymity, and redress via employment tribunal if treated unfairly as a result.

This will come alongside a streamlining of the increasingly complex information available on making (Prevent-related) complaints about higher education – the government will work with OfS to provide “a single online portal” giving staff, students and others “quick and easy access to the organisations best placed to support them.”

What’s notable here is what’s missing from that framing – any mention of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), which is the actual designated complaints body for higher education in England. If you’re building a single point of truth for the complaints landscape, the OIA’s absence from the announcement is odd.

OfS itself already has processes for complaints (where an individual has concerns about their provider) and notifications (when a third party has concerns relating to OfS’ regulatory remit). Adding whistleblowing designation creates a third route – one with stronger legal protections but a narrower scope, limited to disclosures about specific categories of wrongdoing.

Readers who have been following the judicial review of the Office for Students brought by the University of Sussex may well be wondering how all of this works alongside the common law exclusive jurisdiction of the university visitor in providers with a Royal Charter or similar governance arrangements.

As David Kernohan has set out, the visitorial system is an archaic jurisdictional weirdness – but one with real legal teeth. Common law gives visitors exclusive jurisdiction over whether a chartered university is correctly applying its own internal rules. Sussex’s legal team argued in its judicial review that OfS was ultra vires in ruling on the university’s internal scheme of delegation, because the King (as visitor) has exclusive jurisdiction – and Parliament hasn’t authorised OfS to intrude on it.

It’s not a system that is well understood, or one that works especially well. But it has legal force. And adding OfS to the prescribed persons list for whistleblowing disclosures about how a university is applying its own Prevent-related policies and procedures would sit awkwardly alongside the visitor’s exclusive jurisdiction at chartered providers – particularly if Sussex establishes that OfS can’t assess whether a chartered university is operating in accordance with its own governing documents.

The government may find it has added OfS to a list without first clearing the legal path for it to act on what it receives.

Campuses as problem, never as asset

Honestly? The most interesting thing for me about the Action Plan is what it doesn’t say about universities and students.

The paper is structured around three pillars – confident communities, cohesive communities, and resilient communities. Universities appear almost exclusively in the third pillar, under the heading about protecting institutions from extremist abuse. They are entirely absent from the first two.

The confident communities chapter invests in local areas – £5 billion through the Pride in Place programme to 244 communities, with neighbourhood boards where local people set priorities. A further £800 million goes to 40 areas “where social cohesion is under pressure.” There’s £750 million for youth, sport and community infrastructure. £11.5 million for Local Covenant Partnerships to deliver services “through trusted community venues.” £15 million to upskill the youth sector workforce. Loneliness programmes, including a Rugby League pilot in Wigan and Wakefield targeting young men.

Universities and students are absent from all of it.

The paper celebrates Wrexham, where 3,000 young people engaged with the Pride in Place programme, and Hastings, where 4,000 residents generated 7,000 ideas. Both are university towns. The paper doesn’t notice. It references Leicester multiple times as an example of community tensions and imported extremism. Leicester has two universities. The paper doesn’t connect them.

SUs – which in many of these places are huge membership organisations and major employers of young people – aren’t mentioned anywhere in the community investment chapters. SU buildings are trusted community venues. Universities run sports facilities, volunteering schemes, youth programmes, and some of the most extensive social infrastructure specifically aimed at combating isolation among young adults. None of it features.

The cohesive communities chapter is about integration – English language proficiency, participation in civic life, shared values, earned settlement. International students are one of the largest cohorts of people navigating exactly those questions in the UK, and SUs run extensive integration programmes for them. But the paper treats migration and campus as separate policy streams that never touch.

The community resilience infrastructure – the Common Ground Resilience Fund, the Cohesion Support and Interventions Function, the Advisory Board for local authorities, the Social Cohesion Measurement Framework, the local cohesion risk assessment tool – universities aren’t part of any of it. Not the boards, not the practitioner networks, not the measurement, not the early warning systems. Universities are major employers in many towns and cities, and are caught by the workplace religious hatred training provisions – but the paper doesn’t acknowledge that either.

The paper’s own analysis argues persuasively that economic hardship, declining services, loss of community infrastructure and lack of social connection are the drivers of poor cohesion. It cites the weakest real income growth in generations and the erosion of physical spaces of connection. But it never connects this analysis to students – who experience all of the same pressures, live on inadequate maintenance loans, and face exactly the kind of disillusionment and disengagement the paper identifies as preconditions for radicalisation.

The paper even identifies loneliness as “a risk-factor, and a potential driver, of extremism of various kinds, including misogyny” – and then builds its response around youth workers and rugby league without connecting it to the population most likely to be experiencing the transition from family home to independent living for the first time.

The Action Plan treats radicalisation on campus as something that arrives from outside and needs to be monitored – never as something that might partly be driven by the same structural conditions it diagnoses everywhere else. And it celebrates pubs, rugby league programmes and litter-picking groups as community cohesion assets while managing not to mention the anchor institutions sitting in many of the same towns.

Campuses as problem, never campuses as asset. Plus ça change and all that.