A new freedom of speech complaints system for England's universities will come into force for the next academic year, the government has said.

The new system will allow academics and other university staff to take their complaints directly to the Office for Students (OfS).

Then from April 2027, universities could face fines of £500,000 or 2% of their income if they are found to have failed to protect free speech.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said "freedom of speech is the foundation of every university's success" but there had been too many cases contributing to "an unacceptable culture of fear and stifling the pursuit of knowledge".

The new system will not be open to students, who will be able to continue to raise concerns with their university and then to an independent adjudicator.

A stronger law on freedom of speech on England's campuses came into force in August 2025, but the complaints system element has been delayed.

The Labour government has removed an initial proposal which would have allowed individuals to take legal action against universities in the civil courts.

The lack of a complaints system has left academics having to pursue other routes, such as employment tribunals.

The government will set out further details on the new complaints system later on Monday.

Initially, the OfS will be able to review how an incident has been handled, tell universities to change their processes around freedom of speech and direct universities to pay compensation to individuals affected.

Significant fines, including from 2% of a university's income, could mean penalties run into millions for some.

While income varies, a medium-to-large-sized university's annual income can start at around £500 million and rise into the billions for the most high profile institutions.

This raises the possibility of fines significantly higher than the £585,000 issued to the University of Sussex in March 2025 – mainly over a transgender and non-binary inclusion policy which the regulator said had a "chilling effect" on freedom of speech.

Sussex strongly disputed the claim it had not upheld freedom of speech and launched a challenge of the fine in the High Court, in a case involving some quite obscure arguments about the regulator's powers. The judgement in that case is expected within the next few weeks.

The Free Speech Union (FSU) said nearly one in 10 of the 5,700-plus cases it had fought over the past six years involved universities "failing to protect free speech".

Under these new provisions, the OfS would in theory have the power to remove the right to provide university level education, although that is likely to remain a threat rather than a reality.

The body which lobbies for the sector, Universities UK (UUK), said it was important the new powers were used "fairly, transparently and proportionately".

Professor Malcolm Press, Vice Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University, urged a cautious approach. He said "protecting free speech while preventing harassment, hate speech, and radicalisation are complex tasks involving finely balanced decisions".

While universities have long had a duty to uphold freedom of speech, these stronger powers were initially proposed under the last Conservative government and are now gradually being introduced in an amended form.

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott said universities had "been left exposed to censorship with no clear route of redress".

"Research was silenced, controversial work was shelved and universities were able to dodge accountability," she said.

In 2024, Prof Jo Phoenix won an unfair dismissal case against the Open University over a failure to defend her gender-critical views.

Earlier this year, the leading music conservatoire Trinity Laban reached an out-of-court settlement with the jazz musician Martin Speake, after he criticised Black Lives Matter and critical race theory.

Another high profile academic Prof Alice Sullivan has begun legal action against the University of Bristol.

China's influence on freedom of speech, including academic research, has also been a concern, because of the financial importance of higher international tuition fees from Chinese students to universities.

A row over human rights research at Sheffield Hallam University brought the issues to public attention.

The new system will not consider these historic cases.

Reform's Suella Braverman said a "culture of censorship" had taken hold on university campuses, and while the measures were overdue the fines should be greater to act as a real deterrant.

The Lib Dems' universities spokesman, Ian Sollom, said a complaints scheme and bigger fines were only as good as the regulator behind them, and the OfS needed to issue clear guidance.

The Green Party was approached for comment.

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"Edward", a nine-year old Kenyan boy, has always been aware his father worked for the British military. The boy's skin colour, lighter than his peers, has provoked years of bullying. His father disappeared before Edward [not his real name] was born, leaving his mum living in extreme poverty, ostracised by some of her family.

Now this man, who worked as a contractor at a British army base in Kenya, along with 19 others who served as soldiers there, have been identified through a ground-breaking DNA and legal process as the fathers of children born near the base, and tracked down. Paternity has so far been legally confirmed in 12 of the cases by the UK's highest Family Court judge.

The process provides answers for children who did not know where, or even in some cases who their fathers were – or who had been led to believe they had died. All have been seeking answers about their heritage, and have faced financial hardship. Most of the 12 confirmed cases are now eligible to register for British citizenship. Those under 18 or in further education will be eligible for child support.

UK solicitor James Netto, and Kelvin Kubai, a lawyer finding clients on the ground in Kenya, say there are nearly 100 documented cases of children born near the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) to British soldiers. Netto believes there could be many more.

Batuk, which was set up in 1964 and sees more than 5,000 British personnel pass through every year, has attracted significant controversy over the decades it has been located in Nanyuki, a market town 185km (115 miles) north of Nairobi.

A two-year Kenyan parliamentary inquiry published last December accused British soldiers of operating within "a culture of impunity" at the base, resulting in sexual abuse, two allegations of murder, rights violations, environmental destruction and the abandonment and neglect of local children.

The UK Ministry of Defence responded that it "deeply regrets those issues and challenges which have arisen in relation to the UK's defence presence in Kenya… We continue to take action wherever possible to address them".

James Netto was first alerted to the issue of children seeking their fathers in Nanyuki in 2024. He teamed up with leading genetics professor Denise Syndercombe Court and they arrived in Kenya "armed with a suitcase full of DNA kits".

They then cross-referenced the DNA samples they gathered with the genetic profiles available to view on commercial genealogy databases to find the absent British military fathers of clients aged from three years to 70.

"Nothing like this has ever been done before, where you're engaging DNA testing on such a scale" in the UK courts, Netto says. And he and his team have a huge pool of genetic information to compare their samples with. By last year, there were almost 30 million profiles available on Ancestry.com, the largest of the commercial DNA websites which Syndercombe Court joined and used as their main source.

Netto says they had no idea how many leads they would get and were astounded by the good results. "We had completely distant family members, we had relatively close family members, all the way up to the bullseye hit of fathers being named and identified."

The breakthrough is potentially life-changing for Edward and his mother Nasibo, as he will now be entitled to financial support from his father.

"I used to think they were gentlemen," Nasibo says of the British military. She believed Edward's father truly loved and cared for her. We have seen a letter the soldier's mother wrote to Nasibo, before she fell pregnant, thanking her for making her son so happy. And when Nasibo told him she was expecting, she says he seemed delighted. He urged her to name the child after his brother if he was a boy, she says, and returned from a trip back to the UK with an engagement ring.

But when Nasibo was four months pregnant, she says he told her he had to return to the UK for an emergency and cut all contact.

Nasibo was forced by some of her relatives to leave the family home, she says, and her son was bullied at school for his lighter skin.

"They nickname him 'the British coloniser'," she told us. The UK governed Kenya from 1895 to 1963.

Netto was able to locate Edward's father after the court directed the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs to share the man's name and address. The man has asked Netto not to share his contact details with Nasibo or their son, but the lawyer is now in the process of starting the court proceedings to force him to pay child maintenance.

Another Kenyan, 18-year-old Yvonne, knew even less about her father than Edward did. She had been told he served in the British military but she did not have a name for him, and grew up believing he was dead. Her mother died when she was a baby, and soldiers at Batuk allegedly told her grandparents that her father had died.

The legal project has revealed – through a match with the man's mother's cousin, whose DNA had been uploaded to Ancestry.com – that in fact her father is alive and living in the UK.

After breaching five court orders, he eventually attended on the day his case was being heard. He requested a DNA test to confirm that he was Yvonne's father, the result of which, a week later, showed this was the case.

He does not want contact with Yvonne at the moment. But his mother's cousin says she is eager to meet Yvonne.

Not all the identified fathers have been reluctant to engage.

Phill, a former British soldier who was stationed in Nanyuki in 2004, says he is enjoying getting to know his daughter Cathy, 20. He had previously proposed to Cathy's mother, Maggie, and spent extended time with his daughter over the first few months of their baby's life. But when he moved to another deployment, he says his phone was stolen and he lost their contact details.

Maggie felt it was easier to tell Cathy her father was dead. But as she got older, Cathy discovered he was alive and tried messaging him on Facebook, but he says he blocked her accounts, not recognising them.

At that point, he says, he had left the Army and for some of the time was homeless and struggling with his mental health. "Transitioning into civilian life wasn't easy," he says.

Cathy was also struggling at the time, culminating in an attempt to take her own life.

"Growing up, I felt like I really needed a father figure because there's some things that my mom couldn't understand because of race and all that. It made me feel really lonely.

"There's a part of you that you don't know about. Like it's completely a mystery to you."

With his paternity recently confirmed in the UK courts, Phill says he is glad to have been found, describing it as a "very happy surprise".

He says he is in touch with Cathy, and is already giving her and Maggie some financial support.

"I told Cathy… it doesn't matter what I do, I can never make up for the amount of time that I've lost with her. But all I can do is to do the best that I can."

Netto says that, to his knowledge, Phill is the only one of his clients' fathers so far to be sending their children money.

We asked local Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai, who has set up a charity called Connecting Roots Kenya to help financially support British soldiers' children, if he believed there should be a blanket ban on such relationships, given the number of babies born out of wedlock. He firmly disagreed.

"This [would] be very racist in nature because you are asking predominantly white soldiers to avoid black women [just] because they may bring them trouble. The only… feasible solution… [is] just to ensure that these men are held accountable when they father children during their training duration in Kenya."

Netto and Kubai's work is continuing they say, with more cases due to be brought before the High Court in the next few months.

The Ministry of Defence told us: "Where a criminal accusation of unlawful activity against UK Service

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There is something in the air in Birmingham and it's not the faint whiff of overflowing wheelie bins.

The UK's second city could be about to see the biggest political shake-up in more than a decade.

Labour has been in power here for 14 years, but come polling day on 7 May that could all change.

The unresolved 14-month long bin strike and council bankruptcy – something the authority insists is now in the past – means confidence in the leadership is shaky to say the least.

Add in the political uncertainty nationally and what will happen in the local election is anyone's guess.

Polls suggest Birmingham's electorate has fully embraced five-party politics, with a healthy number of independent candidates giving city voters a sixth option.

Reform UK is feeling confident in several parts of the city, with the Green Party and independents anticipating gains amid a rising tide of frustration.

It means the make-up of the council – Labour currently holds 65 of 101 seats – could significantly change in just over two weeks' time.

However, it's possible that those who have always ticked Labour will continue to do so.

"That's what will happen here, I'm sure of it," says one man walking along Sparkhill's Stratford Road.

"I'm telling you, there are many older people here and they will see the red rose and they will vote Labour, because that's what they've always done."

This bustling thoroughfare is filled with independent south Asian shops, cars, shoppers and a strong community spirit.

There are several independent candidates running here, like other parts of the city; some with shared values have formed loose coalitions with each other.

Some independents hoping to represent areas with a large Asian population are pro-Palestinian, picking up on the frustrations of those unhappy at Labour's approach and response to the Israel-Gaza war.

But one Sparkhill shopkeeper says not everyone is not convinced by their arguments.

"The narrative is that the Muslim vote will go to the independents regardless, but that's not the case – we want whoever will fix our potholes and fight to get speed bumps in the area," they say.

"They can go on about Gaza – every single Muslim wants peace – but they're not going to sort that from Birmingham, are they?"

In a halal meat shop, the views of customers are varied, with people declaring support locally for the Greens, Lib Dems and Reform.

"I know that may surprise you," a young Asian man, in his 30s, tells the growing queue of how he is considering backing Nigel Farage's party.

"But I look around me and things have gone down hill since I grew up here in the 90s," he says, adding fly-tipping and antisocial behaviour are among the problems.

"I think we need change here and they might be the ones to do it."

Everyone in the shop says they're going to vote on 7 May, except one young man.

"Don't get me wrong, I've voted every year of my life, but not this time," he says.

"They're just in it for themselves and I don't see the point."

Just being visible in the community is what supervisor Tanveer Mahmood wants from his local councillors.

"They come here with their flyers – vote me, vote me – but will we see them once it's over?," he asks.

"A good councillor needs to be in reach when we have problems," he adds, citing illegal parking as a major local issue that is rarely resolved.

Mohammed Sufyain has just returned from working in Qatar, where he has set up a tutoring company.

"I'm 28 years old and I've been out the country for two years, and I've come back and things seem worse," he says.

"Bins not collected and potholes are a huge problem. I don't think there's been any improvements here."

He's not decided which of Sparkhill's 14 candidates he will vote for.

"I want someone genuine, someone who cares and someone who wants to make a difference," Sufyain adds.

Six miles away in Northfield, shoppers flood in and out of Home Bargains and B&M, just a few metres away from each other.

It's a busy little high street despite some recent shop closures, including New Look and Bodycare. Union jacks hang from lampposts – this was one of the first areas in England to see that trend emerge.

Community spirit is strong here too, but residents speak of rising crime and fewer police officers, as well as having to make really tough decisions due to the growing cost of living.

Father-of-two Roger Hackley works in ward service at City Hospital, travelling across Birmingham for each four-hour shift.

His wife died seven years ago and he says he recently had his house repossessed because he was unable to pay the mortgage.

Hackley does not feel politicians locally or nationally represent him.

"I won't be voting," he says. "It's not for me. I just don't see how they can help me or my family."

Janet Walsh retired last week from a specialist dental surgery.

She says she is disillusioned by politics at the moment and doesn't think Sir Keir Starmer has made the best decisions for pensioners.

Husband Brian follows local politics closely, though.

"I think the council is too big – I don't think it's manageable, the largest council in Europe isn't it?" he says.

"There's a lot of complacency, they've also fallen foul of some fair pay issues in the past and that's taken us to the brink.

"I don't think it's as bad as the opposition and the media have been making out though. And I do feel we're on the road to recovery."

Labour insist they are the ones to continue the work to turn the city's fortunes around.

Speaking in February after delivering a balanced budget and declaring the "bankrupt Birmingham" tag no longer accurate, leader John Cotton said he was "determined the mistakes of the past will not be repeated".

Residents have had to endure council tax rises of more than 17% over two years to help the authority balance the books.

The acrimonious dispute with striking bin workers also continues – agency crews have been picking up the city's rubbish weekly, but recycling hasn't been collected in more than a year.

Nevertheless, the council has been forging ahead with a new waste system. From June, the rollout of new bins will begin including food waste containers, with general rubbish collections moving to fortnightly.

Other parties' electoral leaflets routinely cite the strike and financial woes as reasons to choose them instead.

The city's Conservative leader Robert Alden says they would keep bin collections weekly, introduce clean up crews for each ward and deal with the "frankly embarrassing" road conditions.

The Greens say they will prioritise cleaner streets with resumed recycling collections, protecting public services, road safety and building more council houses.

Launching the Lib Dem manifesto in Birmingham, leader Ed Davey said it was "time for change" and promised a cleaner city, safer streets and parks and work to end the housing crisis.

Reform UK held its conference in Birmingham last year, a sign it was building momentum for the forthcoming elections in the city, as well as in Coventry, Walsall and Sandwell.

On the campaign trail, Farage has said his representatives will "cut expenditures, find waste… keep your council tax rises to a minimum".

Independent candidates are united in saying it's time to ditch a large political party and instead follow the individual who cares.

With this many voices competing for airtime, Brummies have got a challenge on their hands in deciding the future.

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