What is the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS)?

As of July 2025, every University and Students’ Union in the UK now has a legal responsibility to register any influence on societies under its jurisdiction by ‘foreign powers.’ This essentially means that if a society is receiving any kind of guidance, support, or funding from a foreign government (or agent/proxy of a foreign government), we need to report this to the Home Office. This requirement was part of the National Security Act which was passed in 2023, and it’s taken a couple of years for the government to implement.

What does this mean?

If your society or group doesn’t have any links to a foreign government, this doesn’t affect you. You’ll see the new question about influence on the risk assessment forms and templates, and all you have to do is click ‘no.’

If your society or group does have links to a foreign government or agent, here’s what you need to do:

When you complete a risk assessment for a relevant event (or your annual risk assessment) click ‘yes’ and then answer the four subsequent questions accordingly:

1. Provide the name of the foreign government (or agent/proxy) which is providing support/influence

2. Select whether the government falls under the Political or Enhanced tier of FIRS (the Political tier covers most countries, but Russia and Iran fall under Enhanced)

3. Select whether you’ve already submitted a registration for the activity to the Home Office (you will need to do this if you haven’t already)

4. If yes, you'll be asked for your registration reference

After you submit your risk assessment, if you’ve selected that your event is relevant, you’ll get an email with a registration number for the event. If you’ve not registered it prior to telling us, we’ll go ahead and do that bit for you!

There’s extra guidance for this which you can check out online:

• This Wonkhe article (hyperlinked) is a handy guide to how FIRS impacts Students’ Unions across the UK

• The Home Office has also published some guidance (hyperlinked), but be warned; it’s very dense

We appreciate that this is a sensitive issue, and that the new laws around it have come as a bit of a surprise (including to us). If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at activities@exeterguild.com, and we’ll be happy to chat about how this might affect your society.

FAQs

Why do we have to ask these questions?

All UK institutions must now report any activity they undertake which has been supported, influenced or funded by a foreign government. This was a part of the National Security Act 2023, and the legislation is now being implemented across the country.

Do you have to register each individual event?

Yes. For individual event RAs, we can just register each time you submit. For annual risk assessments, if there’s activity covered which requires registration under FIRS, we’ll arrange a chat to discuss how often this activity is taking place, and how we can go about ensuring we are fulfilling our legal responsibilities.