FOI_25-105 Clearing
Date of response: 07 May 2025
We have now considered your request of 07 April 2025 for the following information:
Question 1. Can please provide for the 2024 clearing cycle, for home UK students only.
The total number of courses with clearing vacancies at 08.00 am on the morning of 15th August.
Our response:
308
Question 2. The total number of calls made to the university Clearing Helpline on Thursday 15th.Question 3. The average wait time between 08.00 -12.00 on Thursday 15th for a call to the clearing helpline to be answered by a clearing line customer adviser.
Question 4. The total number of offers of a clearing place made on Thursday 15th.
Our response:
The University holds the requested information. Unfortunately, on this occasion, it is not possible to provide all the requested information. The Act contains a number of exemptions that allow public authorities to withhold certain information from release. We have applied the following exemption to part of your request.
| Exemption | Reason |
|---|---|
| s.43(2) Prejudice to commercial interests | Disclosure of information would/would be likely to prejudice the commercial interest of a person defined by the Act |
We have applied this exemption to our response for questions 2-4. It is our belief that release of this information would prejudice the commercial interests of the University.
To compete in the Higher Education market, with leading UK and international universities, the University must ensure that information that would be strategically useful to its competitors is not placed in the public domain. Release of such information would potentially compromise the University’s ability to recruit and retain students during clearing process. The University’s position would be compromised if it were to release information that would benefit its competitors.
Providing the total number of calls and the average wait times could give competitors insight into the scale of our clearing operations and indirectly reveal details about how we resource this activity, including staffing in future cycles. In addition, the number of offers made by the University is not in the public domain and if released it would give competitors a commercial advantage; allowing competitors to target and plan marketing campaigns.
Publishing this data may also influence applicant behaviour for future cycles and would mean we are unable to compete fairly.
In the competitive environment of UK higher education, such insights would likely offer other institutions a strategic advantage, potentially impacting the University's ability to compete effectively in future clearing campaigns. The risk of commercial harm outweighs the benefits of disclosure.
The application of this exemption requires an examination of the public interest in disclosure as opposed to that in non-disclosure.
The factors in favour of disclosure would include:
· Increasing public understanding of the clearing helpline operations; volume of calls and wait times during the admissions clearing process.
· Enhancing the transparency and openness of the clearing helpline operations and how this impacts customer service.
· Increasing public confidence in the integrity and probity of the standards of the clearing helpline on specific dates.
· There is significant public interest in the clearing process.
Factors in favour of withholding the information are largely laid out in the explanation for the use of the exemption above but would include:
· Ensuring there is fair competition for public sector contracts
· Protecting the ability of universities to compete on a level playing field
After consideration of the above factors, we believe, on balance, that the public interest lies in maintaining in the exemption.
Question 5. The total number of students recruited via clearing in 2024.
Our response:
690
Question 6. In addition to the overall 2024 recruitment figure if any students recruited via clearing accepted the offer of a deferred place with 2025 entry can this figure also be provided.
Our response:
29
Question 7. If an initial offer of a place made on the 15th was subject to a university wide standard uniform deadline time /date by which a student had to confirm, via UCAS hub, acceptance of the clearing offer can you provide details of the standard deadline conditions.
Our response:
Our standard response time is 48 hours.