How To Report A Breach or Complain Against the Student Group Agreement, Constitution or Code of Conduct

STUDENT GROUP AGREEMENT

The Student Group Agreement details its procedures on reporting breaches to the agreement itself in Clause 10. Where a dispute arises between the student group and Durham SU, we will try to resolve that dispute informally first. This may include mediation if agreed by both sides. If informal resolution of a dispute between you and the SU cannot be reached, you will need to give written notice to us of the dispute. If you would like to request an informal resolution or give written notice to the SU, you can do so by getting in touch here.

Where there is an alleged breach of the Student Group Agreement by a member of the Student Group, the process set out in the Student Group's constitution must be followed instead (see more on this below).

CONSTITUTION

There may, unfortunately, be times where a member related to a student group is behaving inappropriately, misusing Student Group funds, breaching the terms of the Constitution or the Rules and Regulations etc. In these circumstances, that behaviour needs to be addressed by the Student Group. This may, in extreme cases, involve expelling the member from the Student Group and/or from Durham SU.

If a member is alleged to have breached the terms of their group’s Constitution, then those allegations must be promptly reported to a member of the group’s committee. If you do not have a copy of your group’s constitution, you can request one from the SU. All persons involved in the process must, at the outset, sign a declaration to confirm that they will deal with the matter sensitively and with respect for the privacy of the relevant member concerned, and shall treat the information that they are privy to as part of the process as confidential.

Allegations of breach of Constitution must, where possible, be dealt with in an informal and prompt manner. However, where this is not possible, or where the relevant member of the Committee believes that the breach is more than minor or has been committed before by the same person, then the Student Groups Committee must be notified and a more formal process followed, which is detailed in Clause 11 of the group’s Constitution. To notify us and the Student Groups Committee, you will need to get in touch here.

CODE OF CONDUCT

Any person may make a complaint against the Code of Conduct by getting in touch here and providing a brief outline to your complaint. You may also, but do not have to, draw the concern to the attention of a member of the Durham SU staff team first before deciding to submit the complaint - the member of staff who you speak to will likely not be the investigating officer. We recommend that you are willing to be named in the complaint as this enables a greater scope of evidence to be considered.

Anonymous complaints will be considered but are not guaranteed to be accepted, and an appropriate course of action will be decided by the Chief Executive or their nominee on a case-by-case basis. There will, of course, be a limited extent to which action can be taken and the opportunity to gather further evidence or give feedback will be restricted. Further information on how the SU deals with complaints against the Code of Conduct can be found in Clause 6 onwards of the document itself.

Any deviations from Durham SU’s standard Complaints Procedure must be pre-approved by the board of Durham SU.

For any issues relating to accessing the links above, please get in touch here.