Catalogue description Office for Fair Access Website

Please see information at Divisional level.

This series contains more than one link to the ‘snapshots’ of this website. For some websites, the URL may change periodically. Despite this change to the URL these websites are part of the same record series as they represent the department or organisation’s presence on the web at the time. Occasionally, more than one domain URL to the same website may run in parallel creating an overlap.

The Office for Fair Access (OFFA) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), later the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), that helps safeguard and promote fair access to higher education. It is responsible for ensuring that any university or higher education institution in England which plans to charge variable tuition fees from the academic year has in place an acceptable plan to promote equitable access among its undergraduate applicants and those considering applying. The main way it does this is by approving and monitoring 'access agreements'. All English universities and colleges that want to charge higher fees must have an 'access agreement' with OFFA.