Investigations

We offer universities a complete investigation service for reports of sexual misconduct, harassment, or hate, from the outset of the investigation through to presentation at a disciplinary hearing. We investigate both student and staff cases, including staff grievances, and work to your institution’s own policies, procedures, and regulatory framework. We also offer guidance on responding to any challenge via appeal or ombudsman. Our lead investigator has conducted more than 50 serious and complex investigations over the last six years.

Safeguarding and risk at the centre

Serious misconduct cases sit where investigation, safeguarding, and risk meet. We bring senior safeguarding leadership and experience of managing the most complex, high-risk cases, including multi-agency work with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and probation, and an understanding of how serious sexual and violent offending intersects with university processes and duties of care. That means an investigation that stays alert to risk and to the wellbeing of everyone involved, alongside the procedural questions.

We also keep the voice of those affected at the centre of our work. Reporting parties, respondents, and witnesses are treated with fairness and care, and our experience of meaningful engagement with survivors shapes how we plan and conduct every investigation.

Why use a specialist investigator?

Student casework in higher education has become a highly specialised field. Over three decades, the expectations placed on universities across the UK and Ireland have shifted decisively: from guidance that discouraged the internal handling of serious misconduct, to frameworks that place clear duties on institutions to prevent it, respond to it, and investigate it well.

That shift carries real consequences in every jurisdiction we work in:

Requirements differ across the UK and Ireland, but the expectation that investigations are run by trained, capable people now runs through all of them.

The courts have raised the bar too, confirming that natural justice and Equality Act duties apply to university processes. An investigation that falls short puts everyone at risk: confidence in the process, outcomes that must withstand appeal or ombudsman scrutiny, and the institution’s own position. Fair, robust, and trauma-informed investigations are no longer just morally right; they are what regulators, ombuds services, and the courts now expect. You can trace how these duties have developed on our regulatory landscape page.

HE-relevant investigations

Many investigators come from legal or policing backgrounds. While their skills are valuable, they may be unfamiliar with the nuances of the higher education sector. HE investigations do not seek to prove criminal breaches of law; they determine breaches of institutional policy within the specific HE regulatory framework.

We bring years of experience in quality assurance and compliance, specifically tailored to student casework in higher education. We understand the unique procedural and regulatory requirements of universities. This matters for compliance too: under Condition E6, the OfS expects staff who undertake investigations to have the “required knowledge and skills”, from an up-to-date understanding of harassment and sexual misconduct definitions to trauma-informed practice and robust, well-documented decision-making.

Compliance in England now extends beyond harassment and sexual misconduct. Duties under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 can cut across student conduct cases, and we are well versed in the OfS’s guidance; we will always tell you honestly if we think proceeding with an investigation may put you at risk of non-compliance. We have written for Wonkhe about where that guidance sits uneasily with student-on-student complaints.

What the OIA’s guidance expects of investigations

In September 2026 the OIA published a Good Practice Framework section on handling reports about harassment and sexual misconduct. It applies to providers in England and Wales that belong to the OIA Scheme. On investigations it says, among other things, that:

• investigators should, wherever possible, be trained in gathering and evaluating information using trauma-informed techniques (paragraph 180);
• the investigator should not have been involved in the matter before, and should not be someone who has been supporting the reporting student, the responding student, or witnesses (181);
• investigators must approach information gathering from a position of neutrality, taking an exploratory rather than adversarial approach (192);
• the length and depth of an investigation should be proportionate, with reasons documented for choices made, including any decision not to interview a witness (202);
• the investigation report should summarise the information gathered in a neutral way, and should be in a form that can be shared in full with the responding student (204 and 205);
• where a provider appoints an external investigator, the provider keeps overall responsibility for the process and for the decisions made. The external report should not make formal findings that a student has breached the provider’s regulations, though it may include recommendations for the decision-maker (183 and 208).

Our reports gather the facts, analyse the evidence, and set out whether there is a case to answer, and they are written for your panel or decision-maker. Decisions on whether your regulations have been breached, and on any penalty, remain with your institution. For institutions elsewhere in the UK and Ireland, the section is not part of your regulatory framework, and we work to the framework that applies to you.

Get in touch

You can contact us for a quick conversation about what you need and a no-obligation quote by emailing info@campusresolve.co.uk or by submitting the form on our contact page linked below.