Provisions made with respect to current students (see Implications) are applicable to all enrolled students at all levels of study. Warwick delivers a huge volume of information, advice and guidance to its student body and departments are strongly encouraged to be clear about key student reference points; to ensure that these are kept under regular review and any changes drawn to the attention of students early through a process of consultation where appropriate so that impacts can be discussed and planned for appropriately. Particular care should be taken to keep up-to-date via an identifiable member of staff who is seen as the ‘information owner’, key documents regulating the student experience.

Departments should:

(a) Adhere to undertakings in the Key Information Set (KIS)/Discover Uni website and other external reference points, it being noted that areas such as contact hours are particularly highlighted to students.

(b) Ensure staff attend complaints-handling training; have opportunities to share and learn from departmental complaints-handling experiences and report on stage 1 cases to institutional contacts (studentcomplaints@warwick.ac.uk) in order to contribute to institutional learning in relation to complaints handling.

(c) Review departmental handbooks scrupulously to ensure their currency and accuracy; link online to a pdf copy per cohort and to retain an archive copy of this and other key reference points for the course duration plus one year.

(d) Review and ensure the currency, accuracy and transparency and intelligibility of course regulations; course specifications, and module information. The courts will resolve any ambiguity in favour of the student.

(e) Train staff and student ambassadors involved in marketing/recruitment/online ‘chat’/social media activity and blogging to ensure appropriate awareness of consumer protection legislation and key principles for involvement in activities of this nature. Departments should make clear where students are or are not representing the department and where they are being paid by the department for this activity, even where opinions expressed are the students’ own.

(f) Manage change in academic provision and associated organisation sensitively, taking into account at the earliest possible stage consultation with current students.

(g) Ensure the publication online of clear information relating to assessment methods; progression requirements; pre-requisites for study in subsequent years; criteria used in consideration of borderline candidates and differential calculation considerations relevant to progression decisions.

CMA guidance emphasises that all ‘material information’ should be in a ‘durable medium’. Steps have been taken to ensure that this occurs for applicants at the point an offer of a place is made. Departments are strongly encouraged to ensure that handbooks and other key reference points for enrolled students are also retained in this medium and/or archived in a pdf version. The CMA considers appropriate media to be paper, e-mail or any other medium that allows information be personally addressed to the recipient, stored so as to enable access for future reference for the duration of the period that future reference would be required, and allows the unchanged reproduction of information stored. It provides the students with a record of the contract they entered into with the University. Handbooks that are only available online as webpages only would not be counted as a durable format and departments are specifically asked to ensure a durable version per cohort is retained.