Year: 2026

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UCU FN2 counterproposal (Part 1 & 2)

Part 1

    • Identifies more than £40 million of recurring annual savings and income opportunities, exceeding the savings currently being sought through redundancies.
    • Shows how substantial savings can be achieved through attrition, workforce planning, consultancy reductions, procurement efficiencies and tighter control of discretionary spending.
    • Proposes measures to protect and grow income through recruitment, retention, degree apprenticeships, CPD and other high-margin educational activity.
    • Challenges the University’s assumptions around surplus targets, strategic spending and capital investment, arguing that alternative choices are available.
    • Sets out a more federated model of governance, returning greater decision-making power to Schools and local units.

This is not simply a critique of management’s plans. It is a detailed and financially credible alternative vision for the University, that could end this death spiral.

Part 2

This covers area by area counterproposals

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University of Nottingham Staff to Strike as Council Decides Future of Jobs

Staff at the University of Nottingham will strike on 30th September and 1st October, as the University’s governing Council meets to decide the final Future Nottingham Phase 2 (FN2) restructuring plans. The two-day strike will be followed by sustained strike action from 5th October to 11th December, alongside action short of strike.

The action comes as both UCU and UNISON have passed votes of no confidence in University Council over its handling of FN2. Council is the University’s governing body – effectively its board of trustees. It has ultimate responsibility for the University’s finances and strategy and, crucially, for holding senior management to account. The unions argue that Council has failed to do so.

Council rubber stamped the draft FN2 business case despite overwhelming opposition from Senate, the University’s principal academic body, and despite serious concerns about the evidence underpinning the university’s disastrous proposals that could result in compulsory redundancies and the loss of entire areas of teaching and research.

UCU argues that there is now no financial justification for compulsory redundancies. Undergraduate recruitment has been strong, applications for voluntary redundancy have increased substantially, staff have submitted extensive alternative proposals capable of delivering further savings and the university itself is saying it now has a surplus. 

Yet the University has still not ruled out compulsory redundancies.

UCU has deliberately called the first strike days to coincide with the Council meeting at which the final business case will be considered.

“We don’t want to strike, but staff will not stand by while colleagues lose their jobs and whole areas of teaching and research are dismantled unnecessarily. Council has the power to stop this. Staff have already voted that they have no confidence in its handling of FN2. When Council meets on 30 September, its members must decide whether they will finally hold senior management to account – or force staff into sustained strike action.” Nick Clare, UCU Branch President. 

UCU says the dispute can still be resolved and they are very open to talks with management to resolve the issue ahead of the new academic year. 

The union is calling on the University to rule out compulsory redundancies and the closure of full departments, protect teaching and research, and engage seriously with the alternative proposals put forward by staff.

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Defence Research as a way out of crisis?

Email sent to members on Monday 3rd August 2026.

As part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails, authored by different UCU members, examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we discuss UoN’s membership in the Defence Universities Alliance. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

Defence Research as a way out of crisis?

On Monday, 13 July Tom Rodden, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, proudly announced that UoN had become a founding member of the Defence Universities Alliance (DUA). ‘The alliance will strengthen collaboration between universities, government, the armed forces and industry in support of UK defence and national security objectives’ (UoN, 13 July 2026). A £182 million defence skills package is purported to generate high-quality defence research as well as graduates interested in pursuing a career in the arms manufacturing industry. Is this the most constructive way forward for a university which finds itself in its most severe, self-inflicted crisis around Future Nottingham restructuring?

Under Article 1 of the DUA charter, members “will commit to actively growing research and development activity and capacity in defence and national security relevant fields to support defence aims and objectives” (DUA Charter). Article 2 of the charter obliges members to promote defence industry-related careers within their institutions and to support “defence skills requirements” (DUA Charter). Article 3 commits members to supporting a host of collaborative undertakings with the “wider Defence community” and other DUA members (DUA Charter).

What could UoN’s contribution look like? We are told that ‘an example of the impact of dual-use technologies is a partnership with the Ministry of Defence, which is exploring how the world’s first mobile quantum brain scanner, developed at the University of Nottingham, can measure the effects of blast exposure on military personnel in real time at training sites’ (UoN, 13 July 2023). How wonderful! How about exploring ways of avoiding anyone being exposed to bomb blasts in the first place?

Military related research is highly problematic for a number of reasons. First, it produces no use value. The resulting commodities are for deterrence at best but – especially in the case of a country like the United Kingdom, which is almost constantly involved in military adventures abroad – are ultimately the means by which to kill people. Second, arms manufacturing and the military are some of the biggest global polluters. ‘It is estimated that the military sector (including industries that produce equipment and weapons) is one of the largest sources of emissions, producing 5.5.% of total global emissions’ (CEDARE 2025). Unsurprisingly the US military, with which the United Kingdom has a notoriously toxic romance, is especially problematic (Martin, Earth’s Greatest Enemy, 2025). Third, arms manufacturing draws on resources desperately needed to confront the real problems of our time including a crumbling National Health Service and an underfunded education system.

In their May 2026 official statement on the DUA, Demilitarise Education (dED) spells out four major ways the Alliance represents a threat to academic freedom. This is by:

    • Redirecting research priorities away from addressing pressing social, environmental, and humanitarian challenges toward military applications;
    • Compromising institutional independence by making universities dependent on arms/military funding and strategic alignment;
    • Military career pathways prioritised through UCAS-linked partnerships and £182 million for Defence Technical Excellence Colleges, creating institutional pressure to align with military priorities (Press release here);
    • Creating ethical conflicts for researchers and students whose values oppose war and militarisation.

In short, increased defence research money is not an opportunity for Higher Education. It comes on the heels of widespread financial difficulties across the sector (Universities UK, 25 February 2026) as well as cuts to research funding (BBC, 9 July 2026), re-directing efforts away from more productive areas.

It is often argued that the new security environment would leave us with no alternative but to strengthen our defences. In June 2026, then UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared that Russia could attack us as soon as in four years’ time (Euronews, 5 June 2026). Considering that Russia has over the last four years unsuccessfully attempted to win a war against the comparatively small Ukraine, such assessments look rather far-fetched. Instead, a threat is being artificially manufactured in order to justify increased defence spending in the interest of arms manufacturers’ profits. Where is the critical research at UoN analysing this ‘manufacturing of insecurity’?

The announcement of the University of Nottingham’s participation in the DUA is combined with assurances that defence research is controlled by ‘rigorous ethical oversight’. ‘The University of Nottingham has robust governance and policies which ensure that defence and dual-use research at Nottingham is conducted in a way that aligns with university values and upholds the highest standards of integrity’ (UoN, 13 June 2026). When challenged by trade union representatives on what this would mean in practice, we were told that the university would of course not cooperate with actors like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. How reassuring! And this, when we know how deeply UoN is complicit in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people through its research contracts with arms manufacturers, its cooperation with Israeli universities and its investment in corporations, which deal with Israel (NCLP 2024). Support of, and collaboration in, genocide are apparently part of these oh so special values which this institution upholds.

In short, membership in the DUA is nothing to celebrate. It is an unethical, shameful, and desperate decision by a management that sends our university stumbling from one crisis into the next. As Demilitarise Education states, “at a time when devastating conflicts continue across Congo, Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine and beyond, universities should not deepen their entanglement with industries that profit from violence, displacement, occupation and human suffering. The DUA is being presented as a neutral partnership for innovation and skills development. We reject this framing.” (Demilitarise Education Official Statement on the DUA).

                  On behalf of the Branch Committee

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New Branch Committee 2026 and outgoing President’s comments

Email sent to members Friday 31st July 2026.

Dear Members

Today is the last day for me as President of our branch committee.  As you know, I did not stand for election again for next year, due to failing health (CMVS/ME) and now needing to learn the adjustments I will need to be able to work as a trade unionist and anatomist/physiologist delivering fundamental science mostly on maternofetal vascular complications in pregnancies and teaching medical students. 

I was very lucky, in that coming to the picket lines during our strikes in the last decade, I met some amazing colleagues, whose clarity of what is right and what is wrong, and how we can change it, made me completely  understand how workers have rights and can demand them, within the law, and persuade management on what a university is about.  We have a strong membership, amazing Reps and Rep systems, fantastic committee. This helped us win most of our fights, there were huge inroads in equality,  decent working hours, freedom of speech, voicing staff concerns etc. The neo-liberal marketized philosophy, unfortunately, is  still trying to diminish our universities and of course our own beautiful university. The fight continues, and we will challenge again and again. 

Looking back, I joined the committee as an Equality Officer, then Secretary, then Vice-President, under the tutelage of fantastic Presidents like Matt, Agnes, Howard and Andreas. The committee members all brought their own strengths and expertise, whether government laws, Trade union rights, Case-work, and from different disciplines that allowed us to understand the totality of what a university is. As President, I was plunged into the Future Nottingham Fights, and here, yet again our members, our Reps, our committee with their collective approach to approved next steps , to stop this size and shrink, which completely ignored the importance of language, philosophy, music, and wants to diminish the sciences by reducing research time and pushing towards applied research and AI.  In the last 2 years, using our rallies, picket lines, the mutually agreed JNCC meetings on university policies and our Consultation meetings during FN1 and FN2, we have spent many hours explaining the principles of right and wrong, arguing against the necessity of large SSRs, reduced research time, course closures and the unnecessary  loss of  livelihoods. We have together, managed to make Senior Management rethink, and accept that they had to revise the business case. Unfortunately,  their tardiness in all this and their incomprehensibility of how much heart ache and stress all this is causing,  continues!  So we keep on the fighting. 

As of 1 August, the new elected committee will start. We have a fabulous President, Nick Clare. There are new elected members who joined the committee (see below), I am honoured to still be on it despite some rumours!).  We of course have our usual turnover of Reps, within the rotating system from individual schools. Our Comms Officers will update the website with their names, and mugshots I hope.

Officers UCU Nottingham University:

President: Nick Clare

Vice President: Andreas Bieler (semester 1); Mel Bhend (semester 2)   

Secretary: Andrew Renault

Equalities and Workload: Jenny Elliott

Past President: Lopa Leach

Treasurer: Tony Padilla

Membership Secretary & rep organiser: Will Paterson-Bassett & Ella Guerin

Casework coordinator & Policy Review Lead: Onni Gust

Casework (and Health & Safety): Cyril Rauch

Health & Safety: Andrew Jackson

Workload Officer and Rep: Mel Bhend (semester 1)

APM Officer: Andrew Armstrong

Equalities Officer: Lisa Rull

Communications Officer: Tom Coogan

Social Media Officer: Peter Woods

Green Officer: Alan Barker

Ordinary members without portfolio:

Cecilia Testa

Marta Aloi

Peter Rutherford

Nabil Fadai

Hannah Robbins

———–

The reason for writing this today, is also because I wanted to thank you. It was a privilege and an honour to serve you. 

Keep strong, we will stop this downward spiral.

All my solidarity,

Lopa

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Outcome from the review of the Alternative Proposals and Collective Consultation

Email sent to members on Thursday 30th July 2026.

Dear Members

You have now all seen the Blog from Jane  consultation within FN2

In it, she thanks all who sent an alternate proposal, but states that the final outcomes of the counterproposal reviews, which would be communicated on 29 July to coincide with the second VR window,  was not possible! They need yet more time!  

Quoting from the website: “FN Steering group received 124 alternative proposals – two detailed counter proposals from UCU and 122 individual proposals from colleagues. Of these, 42 proposals (including elements of the UCU proposals) have been accepted in full or in part, with a further nine continuing to undergo evaluation. The alternative proposal process has resulted in some confirmed changes to the HR elements of the FN2 Final Business Case which will be considered by Council on Thursday 1 October 2026.”  See both links below. 

https://uniofnottm.sharepoint.com/sites/FutureNottingham/SitePages/Feedback-and-alternative-proposals—next-steps.aspx#communications-on-how-alternative-proposals-have-changed-the-fn2-final-business-case

FN2 collective consultation closed – VR open to at-risk staff

Re, our counterproposals, the VC states: “UCU submitted two extensive counterproposal reports, comprising an overarching strategic counterproposal, detailed unit-level counterproposals, faculty-specific proposals, and proposals relating to individual academic disciplines. We have had 12 meetings with trade unions to discuss the original business case and their counterproposals. In addition to this, four deep dive sessions were held with the unions on pooling, SSR, EDI and health and safety, along with two sessions on finance. These constructive discussions and feedback from colleagues will ultimately shape significant parts of the final business case.” Indeed we did attend all these sessions, we sincerely hope so!!

We too have yet to see the refined Business case, or at least a summary of the proposals they have adopted, and rationale for those they have not!. We are horrified that members who spent so much time and effort writing counter proposals, are now being told to wait still further! We have written to HR today, stating as such (and thank you members who also have, and have copied us in). This would have also allowed members’ decisions, as to whether to apply for VR in the second round, or withdraw, to again believe that our informed voices are heard and that we can rescue this university, even at this late stage.  

The VC acknowledges: A significant number of proposals have been adopted in full or part but not to a conclusion at present. This means that we will need to wait for clarity on the form of the draft business case that will be considered by Council at the end of Sept/beginning of Oct. Note also how many governance steps are being omitted. 

At our Final Consultation Meeting, our Regional Officer, warned that they did not give the rationale of the pools created, and this could be challenged.  We do not believe these were proper consultations.  We are writing now to UCU, re permission for Industrial action for next semester, given the large majority that voted for this in our latest members’ meeting.  We will let you know!

The strength of UoN UCU members is now legendary. Other branches in the UK state their awe.

So, full solidarity.