Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what role her Department has in facilitating agreements between financially distressed universities and their commercial lenders.

The Office for Students (OfS) has not facilitated debt restructuring packages of any university since 2018.

Universities are independent from government and as such are responsible for managing their finances. This includes negotiations with commercial lenders.

While the OfS has statutory duties in relation to the financial sustainability of the higher education (HE) sector, the government has a clear interest in understanding the sector’s level of risk. As such, the department continues to work closely with the OfS in order to better understand the sector’s changing financial landscape.

This government is committed to supporting the sector in moving towards a more stable financial footing. That is why we have made the difficult decision to increase tuition fee limits by 3.1%, in line with inflation, from the 2025/26 academic year.

Moreover, we have appointed Professor Edward Peck as OfS Chair, where he will play a key role in strengthening the OfS’s commitment to financial sustainability while also expanding opportunities in HE.

We aim to publish our plans for HE reform soon as part of the Post-16 Skills White Paper, and work with the sector and the OfS to deliver the change that the country needs.