The Auditor General for Wales who runs the Welsh Audit Office (WAO) that is the watchdog for spending by the Welsh Assembly Government has just warned of swinging cuts to public services.
Under the Local government Act 2000, the Welsh Audit Office could intervene on issues of value for money in all public spending for our services. However, the power to intervene and take over a Higher Education Institution, or HEI as Universities are known was removed by the Public Audit (WALES) Act 2004. The WAO has confirmed that unlike local councils the public has no right of complaint whatsoever.
The duty of ensuring value for our money is undertaken by an unaccountable Quango the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales known as HEFCW. It has a statutory duty under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 to ensure standards in higher education.This task is undertaken by the Quality Assurance Agency known as the QAA, which unlike the schools and colleges regulators OFSTED and ESTYN it has no statutory duties or powers. They are simply contractors exempt from the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and accountability to the Public Services Ombudsman.
They are accountable to HEFCW and Higher Education Wales known as HEW, which is an association of Welsh Universities. It is also a schedule 1 registered charity whose primary duty is to its vulnerable beneficiaries namely students. As the QAA cannot investigate any claim of misconduct against HEFCW we believe this an unacceptable conflict of interest that puts vulnerable students at risk.
Student complaints are barred from the courts unless they apply to consumer law. Under the Higher Education Act 2004 the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education known as the OIA replaced the Visitor to act as a judge on student complaints. However, there is growing discontent with the OIA, as it does not make any inquiry into issues of any complexity.
We need our own Welsh OIA that has the power to investigate as well as adjudicate on student complaints. We also need to support students through what is a traumatic complaints process which in some cases has intimidating threats of action being taken against students who are considered to be making malicious accusations!
We in Ceredigion
Have a right to know what went wrong at the University of Wales Lampeter and why nobody was held to account for this financial disaster that cost us many millions of pounds. We also have a right to know why HEFCW deliberately withheld a disturbing report by Haines Watts Corporate Finance on Lampeter, when merger talks were going on with Trinity University College.
If this happened in our schools or hospitals there would be an outcry. So why should they or we in effect pay for this fiasco when those responsible walk off with a fat pension, while staff lose their jobs, students are put at risk , while we the taxpaying serfs are banned from having any right of consultation or complaint?
