Email sent to members on Friday 27th June
As part of our fight to protect jobs at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails outlining various aspects of our campaign. Today, we put the example of management’s decision to close the Language Centre’s popular evening class programme into context as part of the wider job losses across UoN. Remember, we face the loss of many hundreds of valued APM colleagues leaving soon via the Future Nottingham Phase 1 VR programme conducted under the threat of Compulsory Redundancies (3900+ ‘at risk’ letters) but with little clarity of the real case for job losses. In this context, the Language Centre losses come hard on the heels of the suspension of American and Canadian Studies – both harbingers of the wider destruction expected to come in Phase 2. Further details about our campaign can be found on our webpages, via the redundancy campaign tab.
The closing of the Language Centre evening programme – A sign of things to come
Out of the blue in May, UoN management announced that it was no longer going to engage colleagues on casual contracts at the University’s Language Centre. This goes hand in hand with closing the Centre’s popular evening language classes programme; popular with UoN staff and students and popular with people from across Nottinghamshire.
Over twenty UoN colleagues on casual contracts will lose their jobs as a result of this decision. Some of them have worked for the university for several years, in some cases even more than a decade. Enthusiastically committed to their work and students, they have been employed on scandalously precarious contracts. Now they are seen as disposable and simply dumped. HR has not even contacted these colleagues individually to inform them about the decision.
The financial justification for the closure of the evening programme has been completely baffling. The Director and Deputy Director of the Language Centre were initially told by the FPVC, Jeremy Gregory, that the evening programme was returning revenue to the university. While it would cost the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies £147k to host the programme – a sum in itself highly questionable and certainly not the result of employees on casual contracts being paid high salaries – it would bring in £167k and thus generate a surplus of £20k for UoN.
Nevertheless, in an email of 16 June, the VC wrote to the branch that ‘When you take into account the central charges of around £200,000 towards the wider costs of running the university, which all schools and faculties pay, then this activity is actually running at a deficit of £180,000 a year, which is not a sustainable position.’ How is it possible that an evening class programme, which already costs the hosting School £147k incurs another charge of £200k for central charges? Charges for what precisely?
UCU questioned these figures. If the central charges are £200k, does this imply that closing the evening programme would directly result in savings of £200,000? How would these savings materialise in concrete terms? Will there be cuts in related admin positions? Will buildings be closed earlier in the evening to save on heating, electricity, building attendants?
In a further clarification, the VC asserted that, and here we quote at length as the statement is significant–and telling:
‘In terms of methodology, the £200k central cost allocation for evening classes is a percentage share of the overall CLAS allocation based on student FTE. It is a proportionate allocation of the costs that all revenue generating activity needs to cover, and is not a variable activity-based calculation, nor is it intended to be. The expectation is not that the full £200k will disappear entirely if the programme is closed, but there will be variable costs associated with evening classes that are estates or centrally linked (e.g. utility usage) but we have no way of specifically identifying them to get to an activity-based cost allocation’.
The final line, in bold, – is a damning admission of how financial figures are manufactured. This is not about savings. This is about justifying the closing of programmes and related redundancies. What’s more, this manufacturing of figures, and related closure, will likely end up costing the University as a whole.
To clarify, pointing to a notional £200,000 allocation of central costs—yet without identifying which of those costs would actually be saved–severely undermines the credibility of the savings claim. If the central costs remain largely unchanged regardless of whether the programme runs, then attributing them to a specific income-generating activity creates a misleading financial narrative. There is also a wider structural concern. If central costs are fixed and not reduced, then closing programmes simply redistributes those costs across fewer remaining units, making them appear increasingly unviable in turn. This is precisely the kind of downward financial spiral that many in the sector have warned against, where internal cost allocation mechanisms create the illusion of unsustainability and prompt further unjustified cuts.
In other words, the closure of the Language Centre evening programme is like shutting down a lemonade stand because you’ve averaged the rent of an entire shopping mall across all shops—even though the stand operates rent-free on the pavement. Closing it eliminates a profitable stream of income without cutting any real costs. Unless central charges are meaningfully reduced, programme closures of this kind simply shrink the income base while preserving structural expenditure. This not only risks reputational damage and weakened community ties—it actively undermines financial sustainability.
All told, the closure of Language Centre programmes clearly reveals three worrying points. First, management has no problems with treating colleagues poorly. Second, financial figures are made up by management as they go along, always massaged in a way to justify programme closures and redundancies. Third, this approach will make UoN’s financial situation worse.
If the Language Centre evening programme can be closed like this, the closure of any other UoN unit can be justified in similar ways. As we have maintained all along, Nobody is safe! And neither are UoN’s finances.
But we are not powerless, thanks to everyone who voted in the ballot, sending a powerful message to management that we are ready to take action if needed. Collectively we can avoid compulsory redundancies!
