Bloomsbury Institute has won its appeal against the Office for Students’ (OfS) decision to refuse its registration application.

The Court of Appeal has quashed the OfS’s decision and it must now reconsider Bloomsbury Institute’s application.

Today (14 August 2020) the Court published its full judgment.

Bloomsbury Institute won its appeal on the following grounds:

1. The OfS staff who set the baselines/thresholds for continuation rates and progression into professional and managerial employment, that were applied to decide whether institutions should be registered, did not have the delegated authority to do so.
2. That methodology should have been published and consulted upon.

Lord Justice Males, in the Court of Appeal’s judgment, writes that the setting of the baselines (referred to in the judgment as the Decision Making Guidance) ‘is a particularly striking example of a policy decision’ and as such should not have been delegated to the OfS’ Director of Competition and Registration.

“Once it is appreciated that the Guidance (or at any rate this aspect of it) embodied an important policy decision as to the way in which account would be taken of demographic factors, it becomes obvious in my judgment that this was a matter on which the OfS was required to consult, and which, once the decision was made, it was required to publish,” he adds.

John Fairhurst, Academic Principal and Managing Director of Bloomsbury Institute, said: