The High Court refused the regulator's bid for a 10% cut in the University of Sussex's costs after the £585,000 fine was quashed in April. The ruling explained.
The Office for Students must pay the whole of the University of Sussex’s legal costs from its failed defence of a £585,000 fine, the High Court has ruled. The regulator had asked the judge to knock 10% off the bill. She refused.
Mrs Justice Lieven handed down the costs judgment on 23 October ([2026] EWHC 2708 (Admin)). It follows her judgment in April, which quashed the regulator’s finding that the Falmer university had broken two of its conditions of registration, and with it the fine (university summary of the case).
The judgment does not say how much the costs come to. They are still to be assessed.
Why the regulator asked for a cut
The Office for Students (OfS) accepted that it had lost and that costs should follow. Its argument was about the size of the bill. The university won “the large majority of the case”, the judge wrote, but the OfS did succeed on one significant ground, about how far the regulator’s powers overlap with those of a university’s Visitor, and on three more minor ones.
The OfS said the university should not have run the Visitor argument at all, and that answering it had cost the regulator “considerable resources”. The judge disagreed:
“I agree with the University that the Visitors issue was an important one, in the context of a fairly new statutory scheme, and a complex regulatory framework, with no directly applicable previous authority… Although I found against the University on the issue, I do not think there was anything unreasonable about them raising the issue, or in the way they conducted the argument.”
She added that there were “oddities and changes of position in both parties’ cases”, and that “given the overall success of the University in its case, and the arguable nature of the issue, I do not consider it would be correct to reduce the University’s costs.”
The Free Speech Union does not have to pay
The university also asked the court to make the Free Speech Union, which intervened in the case, pay the costs its involvement caused. The university said the union’s submissions had not been of significant help and that it had acted unreasonably, including by filing further submissions after the hearing.
Mrs Justice Lieven turned that down. She found the union’s points on what “freedom of speech within the law” means were of “significant assistance” to the court, that it had acted in a way that was “at all stages proportionate and focused”, and that the case’s wider importance to universities was an exceptional circumstance in any event. “For all those reasons I decline to make a costs order against the FSU,” she wrote.
What the university says
The university’s press office sent us a statement from Professor Sasha Roseneil, its Vice-Chancellor and President:
“This High Court decision that the Office for Students must pay the University’s legal costs brings a further measure of resolution to a deeply regrettable and unnecessary episode. The OfS’s original decision, which was resoundingly quashed by the High Court in April, has consumed an extraordinary amount of time and resource, both for the University and the regulator. More importantly, it has caused lasting and unjustified damage to the University’s reputation.
“Sussex has always taken our responsibilities to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom extremely seriously. It is regrettable that we were compelled to pursue legal proceedings to challenge the regulator’s decision, diverting attention and resources from our core mission of education and research.”
She said the ruling was “not an occasion for celebration”:
“Our hope is that the OfS continues to reflect carefully on the many lessons of this case, and never again so fundamentally misunderstands both the law and its own powers, and never again prosecutes an investigation in the way it acted against Sussex: in the words of the judge, with ‘bias’, ‘predetermination’ and ‘a closed mind’. Universities need fair, proportionate and effective regulation, and I look forward to working constructively with the new leadership as they seek to change the culture and practices of the OfS.”
How the case got here
The university’s case page sets out the timeline:
- 27 March 2025: the OfS decided the university had breached two conditions of registration and fined it £585,000. The finding centred on one document, the Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement, and how it and two other documents were approved.
- 9 May 2025: the university issued judicial review proceedings.
- 3 to 6 February 2026: the case was heard in the High Court in London. The costs judgment lists the hearing as 3 to 5 February.
- April 2026: the court quashed the decision in respect of both breaches.
- September 2026: the OfS published a report, Lessons learned from the University of Sussex judicial review.
- 23 October 2026: the costs judgment.
The university says the investigation took nearly three and a half years.
What it means for you
For students and staff at Falmer, the ruling means the university gets back its legal costs once they are assessed, rather than carrying 10% of them itself. The university has published the full April judgment and its lawyers’ summary of it; the costs judgment is on the National Archives’ case law site.
Have your say