Email sent to members on Thursday 22nd January 2026. Zoom links have been removed, please find in the original email.
Dear members,
Just a quick email with three bits of information.
Do make sure you vote in the indicative ballot! The email was sent first thing on the 19th of January and some people have found it went to a junk/other folder. It was sent by ‘UoN UCU Branch Committee’ from the yoursay@ucu.org.uk email if that helps you find it. It takes 30 seconds to vote, and a strong message now will help us in our new dispute
A reminder of our members meeting tomorrow (Friday 23rd) at 1pm. We will give you an update on the rapidly changing nature of Future Nottingham and all the branch has been doing to fight the restructure.
Promotion pause response. If this has impacted you and you want to help shape our response to it, we will be having a promotions-specific meeting straight after the members meeting at 2pm on the 23rd. Or else please contact the secretary Nick (nickpclare@gmail.com) to provide your input.
Your Workload Working Group will contact the Health and Safety Executive with further concerns, following their dissappointing response regarding work-related stress as follows:
Business Unit Stress Risk Assessments
Our Workload Health and Safety Reps have repeatedly asked to see evidence of Business Unit Stress Risk Assessments and to this date, we have not received a single one from the Health and Safety or Human Resources teams at the University. There is no evidence that the University’s own stress management policy is being followed nor that any mitigations are in place and enacted to prevent work-related stress.
Organisation Stress Risk Assessment
The Workload Health and Safety Reps conducted an inspection into the University’s ‘Organisation Stress Risk Assessment’ and concluded that the Organisation Stress Risk Assessment was inadequate as a number of mitigations included in the document are non-existent.
Freedom of Information request
A Freedom of Information Request confirmed the following:
No workload models are in place for our APM colleagues across the university, or for our colleagues in Engineering.
From 1 September 2023 – 25 November 2024, 7420 working days were lost to Work-Related Stress absences
4 out of 5 faculties have average workloads of over 100%
12 out of 23 schools have average workloads of 100% or higher, with some school’s average workloads as high as 116%
Effects of Future Nottingham
The University of Nottingham is currently undergoing a restructuring programme entitled Future Nottingham and has not provided:
Evidence of stress risk assessments concerning the planned increase in staff:student ratios from 1:14, to 1:22.
Adequate evidence of stress risk assessments in relation to Future Nottingham more generally.
Evidence of stress risk assessments in relation to course closure threats
Welcome back, we hope you have had a restful festive season to gain some strength. And strength we will need for the tasks ahead. In this email, we want to update you on our first dispute resolution meeting with management on 9 January as well as provide further information re management’s request to provide information on ASOS and the pause to promotions.
Report from first dispute meeting
Following your overwhelming support for launching a new dispute, we have now held the first dispute meeting with the University. We expect to receive more information this week regarding the timetable for the restructure. As soon as we have this, we will share it with members.
Alongside this, we are continuing our work on preparing the indicative ballot to start on 19 January as part of the new dispute. Further information on this will follow shortly. While there is benefit in a newly framed dispute, it is also evident from our first resolution meeting that the continued threat of industrial action will be necessary to move matters forward. So far, management has rejected all our demands outright.
Reporting of ASOS
We are aware that the University of Nottingham intranet contains a form for staff to report any Action Short of a Strike (ASOS) they have participated in. We are currently seeking further clarification, as it is not yet clear exactly how the University intends to treat ASOS or what actions they will take.
If you are considering confirming participation in ASOS to the University, we strongly advise that before completing the form you:
• Ask your manager what they believe the potential impact of your actions will be, and what deductions (if any) may be made.
• Speak to your local union representative for advice.
As we are sure you have seen, the University has taken the decision to pause the promotion process in order to ‘consult’ with the Unions about whether it should run this year while they develop their restructuring plans. We were not told of this in advance of the pause, and we made it clear that we opposed the move. We have since had two meetings to discuss it and have two more to come before the end of the consultation period on the 10th of February.
Thanks to all of you impacted by this who have submitted your feedback on the proposal, seeing it all anonymised today was very powerful and showed not just how much anger and disappointment there is, but also how united people are in their feelings. We are exploring collective ways to push back against this beyond the formal meetings, so please be in touch with your rep or the branch if you are keen to contribute.
Email originally sent to members on Thursday 18th December 2025
Dear Members
A last email from 2025 from me, and what a year it has been! Your anger, your strength, and the fight back demonstrated the solidarity we have, the love we have for the Institute we believe in, the work we do tirelessly to deliver teaching, student learning, pastoral care and administration. The work we do to advance global research and knowledge, outreach activities, all make our University the place it is. Yet again we delivered all this, despite the adversities and the appalling lack of judgement from people who do not understand this or what a university is about, that it is people who make the university.
Phase 1 saw us losing amazing APM colleagues, a direct result of fiscal decisions on vanity projects and surpluses wanted by UEB. We did manage to challenge the processes, the pooling and bumping, the Industrial action we called and participated in, which averted compulsory redundancies, legally appropriate conversations and at least decent VR payments. A loss nevertheless. Now, the Phase 2, Strategic Change has begun, where yet again the price of everything and the value of nothing is being displayed. The choice of suspending 42 courses on flawed SSR rationale, start of performance conversations using inaccurate metrics, and now pausing of promotions that people richly deserve, is infuriating. But the fight back continues. You saw the numerous press releases, BBC and ITN coverage, MP letters, the published SSR document that challenges the metrics and emphasises the danger of loss of QS rankings, and the financial counterproposal (AFS2). Please also find a link here to the UCU Close Closures counter proposal, written by an amazing group of colleagues in record time so it can go to JNCC in January. https://uonucu.org/counter-proposal-to-course-suspensions/
The fight continues. Last week 97% of members at the members meeting approved the latest motion on balloting for further industrial action in 2026 if our demands are not met. The letter, re on this, has been sent to the VC, and talks on resolving this will occur in January. It should be within 15 days of receiving official notification. However, not being the ‘Bah Humbug” brigade, we stated we can talk in January.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our Reps, our Caseworkers, our branch committee, for the amazing work they have done, supporting members, writing counter-proposals, sitting on dispute negotiation meetings, consultation/discussion meetings on the various policies University wants to take, and producing alternate excellent counter-proposals in record time, to try and avert this disaster to our university and colleagues livelihoods. I would like to thank all our members for showing support, being there at the picket lines, rallies, your speeches, the ” singers in the courtyards and lawns!”, all showing the solidarity we have and the fight back. (Please see below some images, that we leave behind for history).
Please do have a lovely festive break, enjoy the company of your nearest and dearest. Come back in January 2026, ready for the push back and the climb down we expect from UEB. We will call a meeting in January to get your approval on some key new things we plan to do.
This report was shared with council and UEB members in response to the University’s use of Student–Staff Ratio (SSR) as the central tool for “rightsizing” in Phase 2 of Future Nottingham.
The analysis reflects input from specialist data staff within the University and includes dedicated mathematical modelling conducted by academic experts. We want to highlight several findings of immediate relevance to Council’s oversight of institutional risk.
1. SSR is not an appropriate rightsizing metric.
It is a crude headcount ratio that does not reflect real teaching capacity, discipline-specific demands, accreditation requirements, or research commitments. Applying a blanket SSR target of 18–22 would severely damage laboratory-based and research-intensive subjects and move several Schools outside the norms of any research-intensive comparator group.
2. Our modelling shows severe impacts on international rankings.
Using two independent approaches, we find that raising SSR to around 20 would drop Nottingham by roughly 25 places in the QS World Rankings, taking the University from 97th to around 122nd, even under the most conservative assumptions.
A sector-wide shift does not protect Nottingham: even if all UK institutions moved to SSR 20, Nottingham still falls to around 120th—a mitigation of only two places.
These results already assume minimal negative effects and include modelling of peer stabilisation favoured by QS. More realistic models, which account for reduced research time and consequent decline in citations and reputation, show substantially worse outcomes over time.
3. National rankings are similarly affected.
We project a fall from 51st in the Guardian league table to roughly 74–119, depending on SSR level and the extent of knock-on effects on teaching satisfaction, continuation and career outcomes.
4. Raising tariffs cannot offset these declines.
To maintain our current Guardian position while increasing SSR, average entry tariff would need to rise to around 200–210 points—higher than those of the most selective universities in the UK. This is not achievable in Nottingham’s recruitment market.
Using SSR as the primary instrument for rightsizing is worrying. The risks to the University’s research profile, student experience, domestic competitiveness and—in particular—international reputation and recruitment are extremely high. We strongly recommend that SSR not be used as a sizing tool without a full, institutionally led modelling exercise of the reputational and financial consequences.
Of course, we are happy to discuss this further and to share the data files and scripts used in the modelling.
