Complaint Systems in the UK: Gatekeeping, Silence, and Institutional Violence

Every major institution in the UK advertises a complaint system. The NHS has PALS, the police have Professional Standards, the DWP has internal reviews, universities have panels, banks have “resolution teams.” On paper, these systems suggest fairness and accountability. In reality, they are designed for gatekeeping, delay, and dismissal.

Complaints in the UK rarely lead to resolution. Instead, they follow the same cycle: redirection to a website, generic responses quoting policy, endless repetition of your story to different staff, and finally  silence. The system decides which complaints are “worth” investigating, and whose voices matter.

I say “the UK” because I have gone through every level. I have complained to managers, escalated to senior managers, and even written to ministers, commissioners, and parliamentary inboxes about health, social care, and the DWP. And still  nothing. If even ministers do not respond, what chance does an ordinary claimant, patient, or student have?

In my own cases, I have evidence in writing: emails, letters, internal notes. Yet this evidence is treated as irrelevant. For example:

• Ambulance services: I experienced degrading treatment during a call-out, where my needs as a disabled person were minimised and dismissed. I documented the incident in detail, but no action was taken.

• The NHS: staff pointed me towards PALS while I was an inpatient, praising it as the solution to everything. But once discharged, PALS became another locked door, producing only excuses.

• Banks: after I was given wrong advice that cost me money, I was told they “could not find” the phone call in question. Only when I threatened the Financial Ombudsman did they suddenly locate the evidence and refund me. It took months.

• The police: when I complained about racism, the conclusion was the same as so many others have heard: our colleague was right, you were wrong.

And I am not the only one. In support groups, across disability networks, and among claimants and patients, I hear the same story repeated: people complain, they gather evidence, they follow procedure and the system still denies them justice. Complaint systems work consistently, but only in one direction: to protect institutions.

Racism, Ableism, Classism — Built Into the System

This failure is not neutral. Racism, ableism, and classism shape who gets dismissed and who gets heard.

• When a Black person complains about racist policing, their account is disregarded in favour of officers’ words.

• When a disabled person complains about inaccessible or degrading treatment, it is reframed as “miscommunication.”

• When claimants or working-class people challenge the DWP, they are treated as irritants rather than citizens with rights.

The gatekeeping function of complaint systems is not about fairness. It is about preserving institutional hierarchies and ensuring that the most marginalised remain unheard.

The Rot of Hierarchism

At the core of this problem is hierarchism the culture of protecting staff and reputations over accountability. A racist remark is excused. A cruel dismissal of a disabled patient is written off as “not what they meant.” A harmful decision is defended to preserve the image of competence.

But shielding staff prevents learning. It ensures that failures are never corrected and are instead passed on to the next recruit. This is how rot takes hold inside institutions.

The Metropolitan Police shows where this leads. For decades, complaints of racism, misogyny, and corruption were ignored. Instead of reform, the institution shielded itself. Today, the Met is in crisis precisely because it failed to deal with complaints. What was dismissed as “a few bad apples” was, in fact, a system that refused to learn.

When complaint systems fail in this way, they do more than frustrate. They inflict violence. Not always physical, but institutional: the violence of dismissal, the violence of disbelief, the violence of silencing. Each unanswered complaint tells marginalised communities that their pain will not be recognised, their evidence will not matter, and their experiences will be erased unless they launch petitions, mount campaigns, or go to court.

That is not accountability. It is systemic violence disguised as procedure.

Every mishandled complaint erodes trust. Patients stop trusting the NHS. Citizens stop trusting the police. Claimants stop trusting the DWP. Communities retreat, alienated. Public faith in justice collapses.

If complaint systems worked as intended, they could be engines of reform. They could expose failures, shape better training, and create cultures of accountability. Instead, they preserve the façade of fairness while ensuring nothing changes.

What Needs to Change

The UK cannot continue to treat complaints as threats to reputation. Complaints are evidence  lived, documented, painful evidence  of what has gone wrong. They are the material of learning. To bury them is to bury truth.

Until institutions face complaints honestly, the rot will continue. Staff will remain untrained. Injustice will be reproduced. And the same communities disabled, racialised, working-class  will pay the price.

The UK claims to have complaint systems. What it has, in truth, are gatekeeping systems. And until that changes, people like me and countless others will continue to document our truth elsewhere, because at least here, on our own terms, our voices cannot be erased.

The Department for Work and Pensions and the politics of welfare reform

The welfare state was never meant to be like this.

When Britain was rebuilding after the Second World War, the government made a promise: no one would be left behind. The Beveridge Report of 1942 identified five great evils — Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness and designed a safety net “from cradle to grave.” This was not charity. It was a right of citizenship. Workers would pay in when they could, and society would stand by them when illness, disability, or unemployment struck.

It was about solidarity, not suspicion. Cleaners, carers, teachers, factory workers, bus drivers, the people who kept Britain running were not on high wages, but they worked their whole lives. Welfare was their guarantee of dignity when times turned hard.

Fast forward to today, and that promise has been twisted into something rotten. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the very institution meant to uphold the welfare state, has become a machine of suspicion and punishment. Instead of support, it delivers stress. Instead of protection, it delivers humiliation.

And I know this because I live it too.

My Experience: Missed Calls, Hostile Letters, and No Accountability

On 25 September, I was due to have a phone appointment with the DWP. The call never came. There was no missed call, no voicemail, nothing in my records. But a few days later, a letter arrived. Its opening line: “You need to tell us why you did not attend.” The closing threat: “If you do not attend your appointments… your payment could be stopped.”

That letter was not written to help me. It was written to blame me.

I rebooked for another appointment at 10:30. Again, no call came. Again, no missed call. Again, I was left chasing. Meanwhile, the letters keep coming cold, passive-aggressive, treating me not as a human needing support but as a suspect who needs to prove themselves.

When I once complained about a member of staff who was openly rude, a manager brushed it off: “he wasn’t.” No accountability. No change. Where do you go from there?

And when I tried to do something positive, to move forward and build a business, I discovered another barrier: DWP’s own “Access to Work” scheme. On paper, it helps disabled people start or stay in employment. In reality, for business, it can take up to 30 weeks for support to arrive. But the first 30 weeks of a new business are the most critical. A delay that long isn’t support; it’s sabotage.

That is my reality. And I am not alone.

The cruelty of the system is not just inefficiency. It is baked into its culture. And sometimes, it kills.

• J. Whiting, a 42-year-old disabled mother, had her benefits wrongly stopped in 2017. Just days later, she died by suicide. In 2025, a second inquest confirmed that the DWP’s decision had triggered her death (The Guardian, 2 June 2025).
• M. O’Sullivan, aged 60, was declared “fit for work” despite serious mental health issues. He took his own life. The coroner directly blamed the Work Capability Assessment for causing “intense anxiety” that led to his death (The Guardian, 7 Feb 2020).
• K. Featherstone, a young disabled man, had his PIP cut. His health deteriorated into malnutrition, depression, and isolation. He took his own life. His mother later described the assessment process as “torture,” saying the DWP had ignored repeated warnings (Disability Rights UK, July 2021).
• A disabled woman learned that her PIP appeal had failed. Just 48 hours later, she was dead by suicide. Her life ended with a letter (Disability News Service, 2019).
• 1,860 people who applied for PIP between 2018 and 2022 died within six months of being denied support nearly 100 people a month. Many were terminally ill, but the system still decided they didn’t qualify (Marie Curie, 2022).

Behind every statistic is a human being. And behind every death is the same culture: a department more focused on policing than protecting.

A Culture of Suspicion and Punishment

What ties my story to J. Whiting’s, to M. O’Sullivan’s, to Ker Featherstone’s?

It is culture.

The DWP does not see claimants as citizens with rights. It sees us as cheats waiting to be exposed. That suspicion is written into every letter, every assessment, every interaction.

• Phone appointments missed by DWP become accusations against the claimant.
• Appeals drag on for years, leaving people in poverty and despair.
• Customer service is often rude, dismissive, or outright cruel.
• Assessors ask questions like, “Why haven’t you killed yourself yet?” and yes, that happened to claimants (The Independent, 2017).

Even in the rare cases when coroners or watchdogs find fault, the system protects itself. The National Audit Office confirmed at least 69 suicides had been linked to DWP benefit handling through its own internal reviews, but it warned the real figure was likely far higher, because many cases were under-recorded or destroyed (The Guardian, 7 Feb 2020).

This is not welfare. This is not safe. This is institutional abuse.

The Betrayal of the Post-War Promise

What makes it worse is remembering where all this began.

The welfare state was created to protect ordinary workers, the cleaners, the factory workers, the teachers, the nurses, the builders, people who gave their whole lives to their jobs but never earned enough to be secure when illness or redundancy came. It was designed as a collective promise: “We will look after you, because you looked after society.”

Now? That promise has been broken.

Instead of being a right of citizenship, welfare is treated as a favour. Instead of solidarity, it is suspicion. Instead of support, it is punishment. The DWP, the institution meant to protect, has become the institution that harms.

This is not just inefficiency. It is cruelty, normalised. And it must end.

What Needs to Change

Anger is not enough. We already know the system is broken — the question is: what must be done to fix it? The answer is not cutting disability benefits, not harsher sanctions, not more hoops to jump through. The answer is cultural and structural change.

Here are six urgent demands.

1. A Statutory Duty of Care

Right now, the DWP has no legal duty to protect the people it deals with. That means when vulnerable claimants are harmed, even when they die, the department is not held responsible.

This has to change. A recent report from Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee recommended a statutory duty of care: a legal requirement that the DWP safeguard claimants, especially those who are disabled, ill, or at risk of harm (UK Parliament Report, 2025).

Why it matters: If doctors, teachers, and social workers can be held accountable for safeguarding failures, why not the DWP? It handles the lives of millions, often at their lowest point. Without a duty of care, claimants will continue to fall through the cracks, sometimes fatally.

2. End Hostile Communications

The language of DWP letters is one of suspicion and blame. “Tell us why you failed to attend.” “If you do not respond, your payments may be stopped.”

But many people never “failed” at all. Calls are missed by the DWP, letters arrive late, and vulnerable people are punished for administrative errors.

Why it matters: Tone is not cosmetic. Tone can save lives. A letter that blames can tip someone already struggling into despair. A letter that supports can give them enough hope to carry on.

The DWP must rewrite its communications in plain, compassionate language. For example:

• Instead of “You did not attend your appointment,” write “We tried to contact you. Did something go wrong? Please let us know.”

It costs nothing to treat people with dignity.

3. Independent Oversight and Transparency

When claimants die, the DWP carries out internal process reviews (IPRs). But most of these reports never see the light of day. In fact, Disability Rights UK revealed that older reports have even been destroyed (DRUK, 2020).

This secrecy is deliberate. It shields the DWP from accountability.

Why it matters: Without transparency, lessons are never learned. Families are left without answers. And the public cannot see how many lives have been lost.

All IPRs, past and future, must be published in full. And oversight must be taken out of DWP’s hands and given to an independent watchdog with the power to investigate, sanction, and enforce change.

4. Appeals That Don’t Take Years

Many people who are denied benefits eventually win on appeal. But the appeal system is so slow that claimants often endure months or years of stress, debt, and poverty before justice arrives. Some do not live to see it.

Why it matters: A system that regularly overturns its own decisions is a system that knows it is making mistakes. Delayed justice is not justice; it is cruelty.

Appeals must be fast-tracked, with priority given to cases where health is deteriorating or livelihoods are at stake. Independent panels should be empowered to overturn unfair decisions swiftly.

5. Training in Human Dignity

Customer service is often rude, dismissive, or outright cruel. Claimants have been asked appalling questions like “Why haven’t you killed yourself yet?” (The Independent, 2017). Complaints are brushed aside.

Why it matters: DWP staff are not dealing with numbers. They are dealing with people at their most vulnerable people in crisis, with disabilities, and people facing poverty.

Every staff member must receive mandatory training in trauma-informed practice, disability rights, and respect. Staff who abuse claimants must face consequences. And claimants must have real avenues for complaints that are taken seriously, not dismissed out of hand.

6. Fix Access to Work

For disabled people who want to start or stay in work, the DWP offers “Access to Work”, a scheme meant to provide grants and adjustments. On paper, it sounds like support. In reality, for disabled entrepreneurs, it often takes 30 weeks for help to arrive.

Why it matters: The first 30 weeks of a business are the most critical. That is when support is needed most. Waiting half a year is not support, it is sabotage.

If the government is serious about disabled people working, Access to Work must be streamlined. Support should be delivered quickly, flexibly, and with recognition that disabled entrepreneurs and workers cannot wait half a year for basic assistance.

The Bottom Line

The welfare state was created after the Second World War as a promise: that no one would be abandoned in times of hardship. That promise has been broken.

Instead of care, the DWP delivers cruelty. Instead of dignity, it delivers suspicion. Instead of support, it delivers stress. And in too many cases, it delivers death.

Cutting disability benefits will not fix this. The system itself is rotten. It does not need tinkering  it needs transformation.

We cannot accept passive-aggressive letters that shame people into despair. We cannot accept years-long appeals that leave people destitute. We cannot accept Access to Work delays that crush disabled entrepreneurs before they begin. We cannot accept a department that operates without a duty of care while people die under its watch.

This is not just about money. It is about humanity. And right now, Britain’s safety net has become a trap.

To MPs, to ministers, to the Ombudsman, to anyone in power: you cannot say you did not know. The evidence is here. The lives lost are here. My story is here.

The DWP does not need more excuses. It needs reform. It needs accountability. And above all, it needs to remember why the welfare state was created in the first place: to protect people when life is hardest.

Until then, every missed call, every hostile letter, every delayed appeal, every unnecessary death is on your hands.

 

For more stories visit my substack- https://chronicledtruths.substack.com

What’s New? The Police Were Always Like This

 

What’s New? The Police Were Always Like This

The BBC reported today that the Metropolitan Police are misogynistic and racist. My reaction, like so many others, was simple: what’s new?

For anyone racialised in Britain, this is not breaking news. It is a daily reality. The institution built to “protect” us has never protected us. It polices us. It questions our right to exist in public space, our right to drive, to walk, to stand still, to call for help.

What you might not realise is that it is not just the Met. Thames Valley Police are no different. They may not be caught in as many headlines, but they operate by the same rules: protect their own, disbelieve the racialised complainant, shut cases down before they even open.

I know this because I lived it. I reported a racist incident to Thames Valley Police. What did I get? An “investigation” carried out by one of their own officers against one of their own colleagues. No one spoke to me. No one asked for my account. Somehow, without my voice even entering the room, they concluded that he was not racist.

A year later, after chasing them again and again, nothing was resolved. No justice. No acknowledgement. Nothing. Just silence. The case evaporated, and with it, any pretence that the police care about the truth.

So when people ask me: what chance do racialised people have with the police? My answer is the same as it was the day I dialled the number: none.

Whether you dial 999 in fear or 101 in frustration, the result is the same: disbelief, dismissal, or silence.

If you want to understand how racialised people are treated in this country, look at stop and search. The numbers do not lie.

In England and Wales in the year ending March 2023, there were more than 529,000 stop and searches, a rate of nearly 9 per 1,000 people. But the distribution is nowhere near even. Black people were stopped at a rate of 24.5 per 1,000. White people? 5.9 per 1,000. That means Black people are about four times more likely to be stopped than White people.

Under Section 60, suspicionless stop and search powers that allow police to stop people without even pretending to have reasonable suspicion, the disparities are even worse. Black people are seven times more likely to be subjected to these random, humiliating searches than White people. This is racial profiling, written into law.

What do these searches actually produce? Not justice, not safety, not the prevention of crime. In 2022 to 2023, nearly 70 per cent of stop and searches ended in no further action. Seven out of ten times, the police found nothing. The person they stopped had done nothing wrong.

So, what is stop and search really for? To remind racialised people that they are suspects by default. To mark out Blackness and Brownness as inherently suspicious. To humiliate, to control, to perform dominance in public.

The impact is brutal. Every racialised person I know has a story: stopped while driving because they “fit the description.” Searched outside a shop for looking “out of place.” Pulled over, spoken to like a criminal, while White friends look on in disbelief.

In London, the figures are even sharper. Some boroughs see 40 stop and searches per 1,000 Black people. That is not policing. That is harassment dressed in uniform.

This is not about crime. It is about control. This tells racialised communities the truth we already know: the police are not here for us. They are here to police us.

Stop and search is only the front door. Once you step through it, the disparities deepen.

In 2022 to 2023, there were around 669,000 arrests in England and Wales. White people made up the majority, but when you look at rates, the picture changes. The arrest rate for Black people was 20.4 per 1,000. For White people, it was 9.4 per 1,000. Black people are more than twice as likely to be arrested. Asian and mixed-race people also face disproportionate arrest rates compared to White people. This is not incidental. It is structural.

What happens after these arrests? In the majority of stop and searches, nothing. Around 70 per cent end in no further action. The suspicion evaporates once the humiliation is done. Only around 14 per cent lead to arrest, and even fewer lead to conviction.

This means thousands of racialised people are being stopped, searched, and sometimes handcuffed, only to be released because they were guilty of nothing except existing. This is not crime prevention. It is the industrial-scale manufacturing of suspicion.

The reality is clear. Racialised people are over-policed and under-protected. We are targeted when it suits them, abandoned when we need them.

The violence does not end with adults. It reaches into childhood.

In 2023 alone, police in England and Wales strip-searched 3,122 children. Think about that number. Three thousand children were forced to remove their clothes, made to stand in front of officers, stripped of dignity as well as garments.

And the racial disparities are staggering. Black children are six times more likely to be strip-searched than White children. In some police forces, Black kids make up a quarter of those searched, despite being only a fraction of the youth population.

This is the reality of policing in Britain: children criminalised before adulthood, traumatised before they can even sit GCSEs.

When the Child Q case broke, a 15-year-old Black girl was strip-searched at school while menstruating, without an appropriate adult present. There was national outrage. But Child Q was not an exception. She was the tip of an iceberg.

The truth is that Britain’s police treat Black children as adults, as threats, as problems to be contained. They are denied the innocence that White children are afforded as a birthright.

So when we say the police are racist, we do not mean only in the way they stop our cars or dismiss our complaints. We mean in the way they strip our children of safety and dignity.

When the system brutalises you, the instinct is to complain, to seek justice through the mechanisms supposedly designed for accountability. But in policing, the complaint system is not a path to justice. It is a labyrinth built to exhaust you.

In 2022 to 2023, more than two thousand two hundred complaints of racial discrimination were made against police forces in England and Wales. And what happened to those complaints? Almost nothing.

Take the Met. Between 2019 and 2023, there were 146 complaints about racial discrimination. Only 15 were even referred for professional standards investigation. The rest were brushed aside.

That is just the data we have. Many forces do not even record ethnicity consistently. Complaints vanish into thin air.

Even inside the police, the picture is grim. Surveys show more than half of Black police officers and staff have experienced racism from their own colleagues. If officers in uniform are not protected from racist abuse inside the force, what chance do ordinary citizens have outside it?

My own experience with Thames Valley Police is a case in point. I reported a racist incident. They investigated themselves. They did not call me, and they did not listen to my testimony. They simply declared their colleague innocent. Case closed.

This is how the system works. The police are judge, jury, and defendant all at once. They are accountable to no one but themselves.

The result is predictable: racialised people lose faith. Complaints feel futile. Silence feels safer. The system relies on that exhaustion. It is designed not to deliver justice but to deny it.

When the media declares, with feigned shock, that the police are misogynistic and racist, it presents the problem as one of a few bad apples, a culture gone wrong, something that might be fixed with reforms, training, or another inquiry. But this is not new, and it is not accidental.

Policing in Britain was never designed to be neutral. From its very beginnings, it has been about control. The first police forces were built to discipline the poor, to protect property, to maintain order in a society defined by inequality. Across the empire, British policing exported surveillance, brutality, and racial hierarchies. Colonial policing was not about safety. It was about domination. Those logics never disappeared. They were repackaged and brought home.

This is why racialised people experience policing as violence, not protection. The stop and search on the street, the arrest at double the rate, the strip-search of children, the dismissal of complaints, these are not glitches in the system. They are the system working exactly as intended.

Every few years, a new inquiry or review is announced. The Macpherson Report in 1999 named the Met as institutionally racist. The Casey Review in 2023 described the same problems, almost word for word, twenty-four years later. Between those reports, we saw countless promises of reform, endless strategies, diversity schemes, unconscious bias training, and listening exercises. And yet here we are, in 2025, with the same headlines, the same scandals, the same refusal to change.

Because the police do not want to change. Change would mean dismantling the power they hold. It would mean being accountable to the people they currently criminalise. It would mean admitting that their legitimacy is built on sand.

And they do not change. They issue statements. They shuffle leadership. They put more Black and Brown faces in glossy recruitment brochures. But the structure remains: racist, misogynistic, violent.

What chance do racialised people have with the police? Let us answer plainly: none.

When I reported my case to Thames Valley Police, I held onto a fragile hope that someone would listen. That my voice would matter. That the system would live up to the slogans on its website about fairness and justice. That hope died quickly. My voice was not heard. The complaint went nowhere. The silence spoke louder than any apology ever could.

And I am not alone. Every statistic, every inquiry, every report shows the same: racialised people are stopped more, searched more, arrested more, strip-searched more, dismissed more. We are criminalised, infantilised, and ignored.

So no, the police are not failing. They are succeeding at the very thing they were designed to do: enforce racial hierarchies, protect their own, and silence those who challenge them.

The question is not whether the police can change. They will not. The question is how much longer society will tolerate institutions that tell us, in every stop, every dismissal, every silence, that we are not meant to belong.

We already know the truth. The police were always like this. The only shock is that anyone still pretends to be surprised.

References and Sources

·  UK Home Office: Stop and Search, England and Wales, year ending March 2023

·  Youth Endowment Fund: Stop and Search Toolkit

·  House of Commons Library: Stop and Search Statistics, March 2024

·  Gov.uk: Ethnicity and the Criminal Justice System 2022

·  Independent Office for Police Conduct: Complaints Statistics 2022–23

·  Metropolitan Police FOI: Race Discrimination Complaints 2019–2023

·  Guardian: Half of Black British police report racism from colleagues

·  Guardian: Thousands of children strip-searched by police

·  Guardian: Police six times more likely to strip-search Black children

·  [Macpherson Report 1999]

·  [Casey Review 2023]

A First Look at My Book -The Lived Experiences of a Non-Academic Woman of Colour Working in UK Higher Education.

 

This month marks an important milestone in my life, and since it also happens to be my birthday month, I thought there was no better time to share this news.

My first book will be published this October :

 The Lived Experiences of a Non-Academic Woman of Colour Working in UK Higher Education available to pre-order here: https://www.abigalmuchecheti.com

Why I wrote this book

I first came to the UK to pursue a Masters degree. I worked in higher education, and later went on to complete a PhD. Along the way, I lived the very issues I raise in this book navigating predominantly white institutions as a Black woman, foreign-born, non-academic, and often made to feel like an outsider.

For years, I carried questions that were rarely spoken aloud. What does it mean to belong in spaces that so often remind you that you do not? What does it mean to contribute to institutions that value your labour but not your voice?

Too often, the experiences of women like me are overlooked in higher education. Universities speak the language of inclusion, yet their corridors and boardrooms are not built for us. They are designed to keep us on the margins, to make us useful but never central.

Although the book is grounded in UK higher education, its insights reach far beyond university walls. The patterns of exclusion I describe being marked as foreign, facing subtle forms of silencing, carrying the double burden of race and gender are not unique to academia.

They echo in workplaces, in community spaces, and in national conversations about who belongs. That is why I say the book speaks not only to the UK, but to national and international audiences. It is a contribution to a global dialogue about race, gender, and belonging in institutions that were never neutral.

The gift of an uncut voice

I am especially grateful to my publisher, Lived Places Publishing, for allowing me to write this book with an uncut voice. Too often, women of colour are told to soften, edit, or dilute their truths in order to be palatable for wider audiences.

This book does not do that. It tells the truth as I lived it, and as others confided in me. It holds the silences, the frustrations, the indignities, but also the resilience, resistance, and quiet power that women of colour bring to spaces that were not designed for us.

While it centres Black women and women of colour, it is written with everyone in mind. My hope is that readers, whether in higher education or other professional spaces, will find themselves challenged, moved, and perhaps unsettled.

For women of colour, I hope it affirms that your struggles are neither isolated nor invisible. For white colleagues and allies, I hope it opens up a deeper understanding of how gender and race intersect to shape lives, and of the solidarity that becomes possible when these truths are recognised.

But the audience is wider still. This book will be of interest to students who are navigating universities not built for them, to academics reflecting critically on their own institutions, to policy makers seeking to create meaningful change in education and work, to sociologists and researchers examining the intersections of race, gender, and belonging, and to anyone committed to imagining institutions differently.

This book has been possible because of many people. To the women and student participants who trusted me with their stories, I owe the deepest gratitude. To my editors and the team at Lived Places Publishing, thank you for guiding the process and for allowing me to write with honesty and without compromise. And to my family, thank you for walking beside me with patience, love, and encouragement.

Looking ahead

This book is not an ending, but a beginning. It is part of a larger conversation that needs to continue, about how institutions can be transformed, how silences can be broken, and how dignity can be restored where it has long been denied.

And for me, personally, it is a reminder that the stories we carry matter. That even when doors are closed, even when voices are ignored, we can still write, still speak, still create.

A final thought

As I share this milestone with you, I want to invite reflection. What stories are still silenced in your workplace or community? Whose voices remain on the margins, and how might we begin to listen differently?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

— Abbie

The DEI Illusion: What Oxford University’s 2025 Report Doesn’t Tell You About Real Change

When Oxford University released its 2023–2024 Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) report in March 2025, the headlines were positive: 80% of Britons reportedly support diversity initiatives. On paper, it seemed like the nation was continuing to embrace inclusion, equity, and justice. But for Black and brown people those these initiatives are supposed to serve the reality is far more complex. Public support is not enough; meaningful change requires institutions to act, measure outcomes, and hold themselves accountable.

The report, co-led by Oxford University alongside UCL Policy Lab and More in Common, surveyed over 4,000 individuals across Britain. Its findings seemed encouraging: most respondents expressed favourable attitudes toward EDI initiatives, with only a minority advocating for cuts to these programs. But here’s the catch: the 80% figure is a measure of attitude, not outcomes. Support in a survey doesn’t necessarily mean active engagement, personal sacrifice, or structural change. People can nod in favour of diversity while benefiting from, or remaining complicit in, the very systems that exclude Black and brown people. Survey numbers rarely tell us how inclusion is actually experienced in classrooms, boardrooms, or workplaces. And that is the gap we need to focus on: the difference between rhetoric and reality.

Who Really Benefits?

Oxford University’s report highlights several initiatives aimed at improving inclusion: the expansion of the Harassment Advisor Network, the launch of the Report+Support tool for staff harassment, bystander intervention training, and an analysis of the university’s gender pay gap. These are commendable steps, certainly. But commendable steps are not synonymous with effective outcomes.

Take admissions, for example. While Oxford University has increased the proportion of UK undergraduates from state schools 61% in 2019 offers continue to skew heavily toward students from the top two socio-economic groups. Data from 2015 shows that 82% of offers went to these groups. Even if the absolute number of Black and brown students increases, the systemic advantage afforded to wealthier, often white students persists. Inclusion on paper can exist alongside exclusion in practice.

The same applies to employment and promotions. Training programs and policy statements are important, but do they translate into more equitable hiring, mentorship, and leadership opportunities? If Black and brown staff remain underrepresented in senior roles, or if their career progression is slower than peers, then institutional support is performing more as symbolism than as a catalyst for real change.

Interestingly, the report notes that 37% of the public support cuts to EDI initiatives in public bodies, and 23% in the private sector. This dissenting minority is often portrayed as resistant or backward-looking, but a closer look can reveal legitimate critiques. Some fear reverse discrimination or question whether symbolic gestures truly address systemic inequities. Others perceive EDI initiatives as divisive, implemented without accountability, or disproportionately benefiting certain groups over others.

While not all opposition is grounded in concern for fairness or equity, the skepticism exposes a key truth: support alone, without transparency and measurable results, is fragile. When public approval is high but outcomes are uneven, even those who champion EDI may question its efficacy. This tension underlines the need to move beyond surveys and statements toward actual structural reform.

Oxford University, despite its global prestige, is not immune to criticism. The EDI report cites numerous positive initiatives, but when measured against actual representation and inclusion, gaps remain stark.

For instance, harassment policies and advisor networks are vital, but they only reach those who know how to access them and who feel safe doing so. Bystander training is useful, but does it address deeper cultural norms that allow microaggressions or subtle exclusion to persist? Gender pay gap analyses are essential, yet intersecting inequalities such as race combined with gender are often overlooked, leaving Black and brown women particularly vulnerable to compounded disadvantage.

Even in student admissions, structural inequities persist. The disproportionate favouring of higher socio-economic groups, despite outreach programs, suggests that symbolic gestures and public-facing initiatives can coexist with entrenched exclusionary practices. Oxford University may be improving its statistics in some areas, but the lived experiences of marginalized students and staff may remain unchanged.

Here lies the heart of the issue: EDI is widely supported in principle but inconsistently implemented in practice. Black and brown individuals often encounter a paradoxical environment where policies exist, but their effects are uneven, and the culture often lags behind the rhetoric.

It is easy to “support” DEI in a survey or a headline. It is harder to dismantle centuries of structural inequality embedded in admissions, hiring, promotion, and social networks. Oxford University’s report, while well-intentioned, illustrates this tension. Public support and institutional proclamations may make leaders feel secure, but they do not automatically improve the day-to-day realities of the people these programs are designed to serve.

To bridge the gap between support and impact, institutions must embrace accountability. Transparency alone is not enough; there must be measurable outcomes:

• Are Black and brown students proportionally represented in admissions, scholarships, and honours programs?

• Are employees from marginalized backgrounds advancing at rates comparable to their peers?

• Are harassment and discrimination complaints resolved effectively, and are cultural norms evolving alongside policies?

Without grappling with questions like these or developing a broader framework that digs even deeper EDI risks becoming a performative exercise, a checkbox on a report rather than a transformative commitment. Real change demands not only answers but a willingness to rethink the very structures and assumptions that shape equality work. Change is not only possible; it is essential.

A Call to Action

The Oxford University report reminds us that public support is encouraging but insufficient. Real change requires vigilance, structural reform, and the courage to challenge symbolic gestures when they fail to translate into meaningful outcomes. For Black and brown people, the question is simple: are these initiatives genuinely improving opportunities, access, and equity or are they primarily for optics, brand management, and public approval?

Institutions like Oxford University wield immense cultural authority. Their policies and reports are read, cited, and emulated globally. That influence carries responsibility. Support is easy. Real change is hard. Until Oxford University and other institutions move beyond symbolic gestures, Black and brown individuals will continue to face invisible barriers, even in spaces that claim to champion inclusion.

Oxford University’s 2023–2024 EDI report, published in March 2025, offers a snapshot of public sentiment and institutional efforts. It is encouraging to see high levels of support for diversity initiatives, but public approval cannot substitute for action. Without transparency, accountability, and measurable outcomes, EDI risks being a symbol rather than a solution.

For those genuinely invested in equality, the challenge is clear: ensure that policies translate into tangible benefits for Black and brown students and staff, and confront the uncomfortable truths about who continues to be left behind. Only then can support for DEI evolve from a survey statistic into a lived reality.