No one is going to release into clearing as all the places have been taken and how to do you get a more preferred univewrsity than your first choice?
Removing the cap does free up more places but these places aren't unlimited as all they are likely to be is UK students replacing international students who don't come. Universities will still have a finite amount of kids they can teach a year.
All the places haven’t been taken and even some of the Russell Groups are struggling to fill their places.
The option is now there for the students to contact universities to see if there are opportunities to ‘trade up’. Plus students may not have chose X university as their firm as they felt the conditions of their offer were unachievable yet in clearing universities lower these, some by a lot, giving students a better chance.
The cap was introduced to try and help out some of the smaller or lower ranked universities losing their students to higher ranked universities attempting to recruit as many students as possible due to a number of universities being in precarious positions financially (between 25 and 30 I hear). Lifting the cap now, after the OFS taking such a hard line, would be laughable and potentially see the demise of numerous universities.
Obviously places will depend on the physical space universities have but believe me if universities have an opportunity to over recruit this year they definitely will.
With regards to international students many are still planning to come to the UK but naturally this is going to be a lot lower this year and particularly from key markets such as China, Hong Kong, Nigeria etc for obvious reasons.