The Prevent Duty

The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 introduced a package of measures aimed at countering the risk of terrorism and radicalisation. It created a statutory duty for specified public authorities to ‘have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’, known as the Prevent duty. Universities became subject to the Prevent duty on 18 September 2015.

Essentially, we are required to assess the risk of our students being drawn into terrorism and to set in place robust safeguarding policies and procedures to mitigate that risk. We are required to pay particular attention to external speakers and events on campus, staff training, student welfare and pastoral care and IT policies.

We also need to balance our Prevent duties against our legal duties in terms of ensuring both freedom of speech and academic freedom, whilst also protecting student and staff welfare.

Compliance

The University’s Safeguarding, Welfare and Wellbeing Committee considers in detail how the University should best give effect to the statutory Prevent duty. Our implementation of the Prevent duty is monitored by the Office for Students (OfS). The OfS monitoring framework includes information on how providers can demonstrate due regard to the OfS and how they assess compliance; details of how providers should report changes of circumstance or Prevent-related serious incidents; and how the OfS will promote continuous improvement from the HE sector.

Reporting concerns under Prevent

If you have concerns that a University student or University staff member is being drawn into terrorism, please contact the University's Prevent Lead via prevent.ss@coventry.ac.uk.

If you have a query about the University’s implementation of the Prevent duty, please contact a member of the Governance Office via prevent.ss@coventry.ac.uk.