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Legal Status of Independent Colleges

Legal constraints on colleges

Unlike publicly funded Universities and colleges, independent colleges are not subject to a statutory inspection of quality and there are few legal constraints on the operation of colleges. The one exception is where an independent college has five or more students of statutory education age (i.e. up to sixteen), in which case they must register as schools with the Department for Children, Schools and Families and be subject to inspection by a government agency.

Registration as a private company or charity

Most independent colleges in the UK are legally constituted as private limited companies or as charitable trusts. Colleges that are established as limited companies must be registered with Companies House and must comply with the Companies Act. The Companies House website www.companieshouse.gov.uk provides basic information about companies such as the names of Directors and company financial statements. Colleges that are established as charitable trusts must also comply with Charity Legislation.

Colleges must also comply with relevant employment legislation and Health and Safety legislation.

Education Reform Act (1988)

Since the Education Reform Act in 1988, UK colleges may not offer British degrees unless they are authorised to do so by the government or are in partnership with a British university. The UK authorities recognise those institutions which have been granted degree awarding powers by either a Royal Charter or an Act of Parliament. These are known as recognised bodies. All UK universities and some higher education colleges are recognised bodies. Other institutions, which do not have the power to award their own degrees, may provide courses which lead to a degree of a recognised body. These are known as listed bodies. The DCSF website www.dcsf.gov.uk/recognisedukdegrees provides information on which institutions offer UK degrees.

Colleges may offer degrees from overseas universities provided that they make it clear that these are not British qualifications and that the colleges themselves are not the awarding bodies. BAC requires that accredited colleges offer courses leading to such degrees only if the awarding universities are properly recognised by the appropriate national authority in their own countries. In the United States the appropriate accrediting agencies are themselves recognised by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). The CHEA website www.chea.org has a full list of accredited universities in the United States. Such universities also appear on the US Department of Education website www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation

Colleges which are in breach of the Education Reform Act may be prosecuted by the local trading standards authorities.

Data Protection Register

It is also necessary for education providers to register with the Information Commissioner for entry on the Data Protection Register. Those colleges which have not done so please download the relevant forms from www.ico.gov.uk

Companies Act 1985 legislation
(company documents/stationery/advertising)

Under new regulations that entered into force on 1 January 2007, the longstanding statutory requirement for companies to state certain particulars on their stationery and other hard-copy documents has been extended to websites and various electronic communications. The regulations amend the relevant provisions of the Companies Act 1985 (and corresponding Northern Ireland legislation). It is now an offence, amongst other things, for a company incorporated under the Companies Acts (or the Northern Ireland legislation) not to state:

the name of the company
registered number
registered address

on all the company's websites, and all its business letters and order forms that are in electronic form. If the company is an investment company within the meaning of section 266 of the 1985 Act, that must also be stated. If the amount of the company's share capital is stated, that amount must be its paid-up share capital.

Most companies' correspondence is now conducted primarily by email. Email messages are therefore potentially business letters in electronic form for these purposes, and companies should consider adding the required information to the boilerplate language that typically appears automatically at the end of all their emails. In the case of groups of companies, where staff may send emails on behalf of different group companies from time to time, it may be advisable to include the relevant information for all those companies (provided that the signatory always makes clear the identity of the particular company on whose behalf the email is being sent).

Similarly, websites may in practice feature numerous group companies. It is advisable to include the required details of all the companies and not just those of the parent company.

The requirement to state the company's name (but not the other particulars) also applies to a range of other documents in electronic form, including, for example, notices and other official publications, bills of exchange, promissory notes, orders for money or goods purporting to be signed by or on behalf of the company, invoices, receipts and letters of credit. In many cases, companies will already be doing this as a matter of course.