Tag: 2026 redundancy campaign blog

Email sent to members on Tuesday 28th April 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 share the email and report we sent to members of university council – the main governing body of the university – who will decide on the futures of over 600 academics on May 5th and 6th. We urged them to rethink the university’s reckless plans and to consider a much more careful approach to university savings, presented in the 50-page report attached. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

Dear Council Members,

I’m writing to share the attached UCU report on Future Nottingham Phase 2.

I would strongly urge you, particularly our external members, to read this in full before endorsing the University Executive Board’s plans.

UEB’s current strategy is being presented as risk reduction. In reality, it is a high-risk approach that relies on cutting deeply into the University’s core academic capacity while assuming that student demand, research income, and reputation will somehow hold up. The evidence in this report suggests that is not a safe assumption.

What is being proposed is very fast, very large-scale change. The likely consequences are not abstract:

• student–staff ratios pushed well beyond Russell Group norms, with clear implications for rankings and recruitment (and no evidence to support UEB’s claim that such extreme SSRs will be replicated across the sector, despite a union request)
• reduced research capacity, with direct consequences for grant income and long-term reputation (the strategy speaks of “academic growth” but sets out no credible plan for achieving it, while actively cutting the capacity required to deliver it)
• loss of staff that is unlikely to be “controlled”, particularly among those most able to leave
• a real risk of a self-reinforcing cycle, where cuts reduce income, leading to further cuts and ongoing institutional decline

Put bluntly, there is a credible scenario here where the strategy meant to stabilise the University instead pushes it into decline. Our report sets out an alternative that still delivers substantial savings but does so in a much more controlled way. In particular, it shows how savings can be made through natural attrition and workforce rebalancing, delivering on the order of:

• ~£6–7m per year
• ~£20m over three years
• ~£34m over five years

These figures are grounded in observed staff turnover and avoid the costs and disruption associated with large-scale redundancies. Crucially, in contrast to UEB’s proposal, they do not depend on weakening the University’s core teaching and research capacity.

There are also serious concerns about governance which, frankly, should give Council pause.

The report documents repeated instances where:

• key decisions have been pushed through without proper process
• the information provided to Council has lacked the detail needed to test the proposals properly
• Heads of School have not endorsed plans that are being presented as if they have
• Equality Impact Assessments are incomplete or absent

More broadly, there is a growing disconnect between what is being reported upwards and what is being experienced across the University. Many school leaders are deeply concerned about the direction of travel. That is not being reflected clearly in the narrative reaching Council.

You should also be aware of the wider context. All three campus unions have passed votes of no confidence in the University’s leadership. UCU has now balloted for industrial action and secured strong support, with over 86% in favour of action. We also secured the highest turnout across the sector this year, reflecting widespread and escalating concern across the institution.

Council’s role here is critical. These are not routine decisions, and the consequences are not easily reversible. Endorsing a plan of this scale without properly stress-testing its assumptions, and without seriously considering alternatives, carries its own risks. Our ask is straightforward:

• please read the report in full
• ask for clear evidence, at school level, that the proposed cuts are deliverable without damaging core functions
• question whether the financial projections properly account for the risks set out above
• and give proper consideration to the alternative approach

There is still time to take a more measured path. There may not be a second chance to undo the damage if we get this wrong.

Yours sincerely,

UoN UCU Branch Committee

Email sent to members on Monday 20th April 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 look at the implications of missing Equality Impact Assessments for staff. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

When Equality Becomes an Afterthought: EIA Failures and What They Mean for Us All

Across the sector, we are seeing rapid institutional change: course closures, workload intensification, restructuring, and cuts to resources. At the University of Nottingham, Future Nottingham is steamrolling a number of cuts and proposed cuts: 48 courses; high staff student ratios; the Hopper Bus service; journal access; office cleaning, to name just a few.  But alongside the pace and scale of change, something critical is being quietly sidelined: equality.

Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) are not optional extras. They are a legal requirement under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), designed to ensure that institutions actively consider how decisions affect people with protected characteristics. In theory, EIAs should be a safeguard against discrimination. In practice, they are increasingly absent, incomplete, or superficial.

Our local tracking of EIA compliance reveals a deeply concerning pattern:

• Major structural changes – including increases in student-staff ratios, reductions in research time, and cuts to services – are being presented in the Business Case to Council on 6 May with no completed EIAs.
• Where EIAs do exist (for example, course suspensions – the only one UCU has seen to date), they are partial and limited, focusing narrowly on students while ignoring impacts on staff.
• In some cases, decisions (journal access; office cleaning) have already been made and implemented months before any EIA is completed, raising serious questions about whether equality considerations are being meaningfully applied at all.

This is not a technical oversight. It is a systemic failure.

Why EIAs Matter

EIAs are meant to ensure that institutions have ‘due regard’ to three core aims:

1. Eliminating discrimination
2. Advancing equality of opportunity
3. Fostering good relations

When EIAs are missing or inadequate, these duties are not being met. And the consequences are not abstract.

• Increasing student-staff ratios disproportionately affects staff with disabilities, caring responsibilities, and those already managing high workloads.
• Reductions in research time may deepen existing inequalities in promotion and progression, particularly for women and minoritised staff.
• Cuts to services (like libraries, transport, and cleaning) can have uneven impacts across different groups, including disabled staff and students.

Without proper EIAs, these impacts remain invisible – and therefore unchallenged.

The Problem of ‘Tick-Box’ Equality

Even where EIAs are produced, there is a growing concern that they function as a tick-box exercise rather than a meaningful process.

A basic or retrospective EIA – especially one that only considers a subset of those affected – does not meet the standard of ‘due regard.’ Equality must be considered before decisions are made, not after they are implemented.

What we are seeing instead is a hollowing out of equality processes:

• EIAs completed late (or not at all)
• Narrow framing of who counts (students but not staff)
• Lack of evidence or engagement with unions and affected groups

This undermines both the spirit and the letter of the law.

What Can Be Done?

There are several routes for challenging EIA failures:

1. Internal challenge

Members can:

• Request EIAs and supporting evidence
• Raise concerns through formal structures (e.g. committees, grievances)
• Push for transparency around decision-making (ask to see meeting notes, where the EIA was discussed)

2. External escalation

Where internal processes fail, issues can be escalated to bodies such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which has powers to investigate and enforce compliance.

3. Legal routes

In some cases, decisions made without proper equality consideration can be challenged through judicial review. Importantly, such challenges must be made promptly.

A Collective Responsibility

EIA failures are not just procedural issues – they are about whose voices are heard, whose experiences are recognised, and whose wellbeing is prioritised.

For UCU members, this is a collective concern. Equality is not a separate agenda from workload, job security, or working conditions – it is embedded within them. When equality processes fail, it is often the most vulnerable colleagues who bear the brunt.

We need to:

• Keep documenting and evidencing these failures (contact us/your local rep and let us know)
• Continue raising them through union structures
• Build collective pressure for transparency and accountability

Because equality should not be an afterthought. It should be at the heart of every decision our institution make.

If you have concerns about EIAs in your area, please get in touch with your UCU rep. Together, we can ensure that equality is not sidelined through Future Nottingham.

                              On behalf of the UCU branch committe

Email sent to members on 13th April 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 look at the implications of what redundancy means for academic staff. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

The Academic Dream

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a footballer. Then, around age twelve, I realised I was crap at football. So instead, I decided I wanted to be an academic. Sad and nerdy, I know — but that was my dream.

It wasn’t easy. Academic jobs are bloody hard to come by. I had to finish top of my degree, survive a PhD that was one of the toughest things I ever did, then spend years bouncing around postdoc positions, moving countries every couple of years, unable to settle down. And my partner had to do the same. I was pushing thirty with no security, while my friends were buying houses and starting families.

All of it for the dream of one day getting a permanent academic post. When I finally did, my partner just cried.

Because she knew what it meant. We could finally settle down, just like everyone else.

I love my job. I love teaching, doing research, and being part of a community that creates knowledge. But if I lose this job — I’m screwed. Academic jobs are rare. You don’t just walk into another one. For most of us, redundancy means the end of the dream. The end of a career we’ve spent decades building.

A lucky few might find another post, but not in Nottingham. Probably not even in the UK. Those who do will see their families once a month, if that.

This is what redundancy means for academics. It’s not just losing a job — it’s losing your identity, your community, your way of life.

That’s why I’m asking everyone to fight for my job, my life — and I promise to fight for yours.

Why We Take Action

To strike or take part in a MAB is one of the most generous things you can do.

I love teaching my subject because it’s a brilliant subject. At least that’s how I see it. And I hate telling my students I won’t be in class or that I won’t be marking their exams. I don’t want to lose salary. But I’m putting that aside because I’m fighting for something bigger — for the soul of this university.

I’m striking so that no one’s academic dream is crushed by managerial ideology. I’m striking for our students — not just those here now, but those who’ll come here in five or ten years’ time. They deserve to be taught by staff who feel safe, secure, and valued — not by ghosts in shiny new buildings.

Because that’s the vision of our senior management: more buildings, fewer people.

“The University is Skint” — Really?

I’ve heard some colleagues say, “Why are you bothering? There’s a national funding crisis. The university’s skint. There’s nothing we can do.”

Bollocks.

Even though we threw tens of millions down the toilet with the failed castle meadow campus vanity project we remain one of the richest universities in the country. Yes, there are problems with how higher education is funded — of course there are — but make no mistake: redundancies are a choice.

The Vice-Chancellor admitted this. Our leaders are chasing after a crazy 9% surplus. The VC herself said that the sector operates between 3% and 6%.

So when UCU calls for reducing the surplus target to 3% or 4%, that’s not radical. That’s common sense. It’s about £16 million a year that could be used to keep staff in work and give students the support they need.

But she won’t do it.

Why? Because like so many Vice-Chancellors, she dreams of shiny new buildings — paid for with lost livelihoods. Buildings in which students will be taught by ghosts — ghosts of the staff whose passion and dedication were thrown away on a bonfire of redundancies.

And for what? For a neoliberal fantasy? For a gong and a place in the House of Lords?

People Before Buildings

At a number of town halls, the VC has spoken about “excellence.” Someone asked her how she defined it. Her answer, and I paraphrase: “I know it when I see it.”

I mean, wow.

Is this the kind of critical thinking steering our university into the abyss?

Shame.

I want an employer who puts people before buildings. An employer who will negotiate meaningfully with trade unions instead of just paying lip service. An employer who puts the education of students before managerial ideology. An employer who protects the livelihoods of the people who make this university what it is.

We need to stand together — for our colleagues, for our students, and for the future of the University of Nottingham.

Save our jobs. Save our university!

                                                 On behalf of the UCU Branch Committee

Email sent to members on Monday 23rd March 2026.

As part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we look at one of the central pillars of the “Future Nottingham” strategy: the plan to dramatically increase the University’s student–staff ratio (SSR).

The plan

Nottingham currently operates with a student–staff ratio of about 13:1, broadly in line with other Russell Group universities.

Management’s target is 18–22 students per academic.

For context, no traditional Russell Group university currently operates above about 14.3 on the Guardian dataset. The proposed range would therefore place Nottingham outside the operating norms of research-intensive peers.  

For sure, they will huff and puff about operational SSR vs HESA returns. But no matter how they dress it up, the goal is to get rid of loads of staff that will radically change how this university operates. This is not a marginal efficiency tweak. It is a proposal to run Nottingham on a staffing model that no comparable research university uses.

The miracle metric

SSR is now being treated by management as one of the key tools for “rightsizing” the institution. That is odd, because they themselves recognise that SSR is a very crude metric. It compresses a huge range of academic activity into a single number and ignores things like lab teaching, research buy-outs funded by grants and major disciplinary differences in teaching intensity. Trying to manage a research university using SSR is a bit like running a hospital using the metric “patients per doctor”. Technically measurable. Strategically absurd. Yet this single ratio is now driving decisions about staffing, courses and institutional strategy.

QS Rankings: gravity still applies

One awkward complication with cutting academic staff is that rankings tend to notice. Our December analysis examined what happens to Nottingham’s QS World University Ranking if SSR rises to management’s target range. Even under the most conservative assumptions the result is simple: Nottingham falls well out of the global top 100 – a catastrophe for overseas recruitment.

Once the longer-term effects of reduced research time are included, the projections become much worse:

• Year 2: ~156

• Year 5: ~215

• Year 10: ~240

Universities can choose to shrink their academic workforce. What they cannot do is shrink it and expect rankings to politely ignore the change.

The Guardian table: another disaster 

Domestic league tables are no better. The Guardian ranking gives SSR a 15% weighting, meaning the effect shows up immediately. Our modelling suggests that moving to SSR 20 could push Nottingham from 51st to around the 80s, with more realistic scenarios placing it close to or below 100.   In other words: from the upper half of UK universities to the lower half.

Which matters, because rankings influence where students apply.

The revenue problem

The financial logic behind raising SSR is simple: fewer staff means lower costs.

The problem is that students respond to reputation, rankings and teaching quality — not management spreadsheets. Using established peer reviewed evidence on how Guardian scoring affects applications, we modelled the likely admissions impact.

If SSR rises to 20, the estimated five-year loss in tuition fee income from reduced undergraduate recruitment is roughly £22–27 million.  Push SSR to 22, and the loss rises to around £29–34 million.  And that estimate is conservative. It does not include the full effects of falling QS rankings on international demand. The strategy intended to fix the University’s finances may well damage the revenue base instead.

A final thought

To be clear, the union’s modelling was never presented as a crystal ball. Predicting the precise trajectory of a university over a decade would require a major academic study. Our aim was simply to identify likely trends.  

Those trends are fairly clear. Higher SSR means:

• fewer academics;

• less research time;

• lower rankings;

• weaker student recruitment.

The university says we need to create savings, but what they are really creating is a death spiral.  When a patient cuts their finger, the doctor doesn’t stop the flow of blood by removing the heart.  

This is what our management are doing. 

This is now a fight for the survival of this university. 

You called for a formal dispute back in December, now vote in the UCU ballot.

Save your future and the future of UoN!

                                             On behalf of the UCU Branch Committee

Email sent to members on Monday 30th March 2026

As part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we look at accountability procedures for senior leadership and here especially the Vice-Chancellor. Feel free to share this email with non-UCU members in your area.

UoN unveils Strategic Holistic Accountability Model for senior leadership

After listening carefully to staff concerns about accountability, transparency and the apparent absence of consequences at senior level, the University of Nottingham is pleased to announce the Strategic Holistic Accountability Model, a new framework designed to embed a culture of excellence in senior leadership governance.

SHAM will support the delivery of excellence in leadership by demonstrating that senior leaders are appropriately accountable within the institutional framework agreed by senior leadership, as defined by the Board Oversight and Governance for University Strategy model. In doing so, long-established norms of institutional leadership excellence will be safeguarded.

The Vice-Chancellor, who has repeatedly emphasised the importance of accountability, graciously agreed to be the first senior leader reviewed under the pilot process.

Pilot Accountability Reflections: Outcomes, Developments, and Yardsticks

The review panel comprised leading members of the University Executive Board, including several directly associated with the Castle Meadow Campus project. This was widely welcomed as ensuring that the review was informed by those with direct understanding of the decisions under consideration, enabling a self-consistent and well-contextualised interpretation of outcomes aligned with institutional priorities.

The Chair of the panel described the resulting review methodology as both “robustly self-informed” and “appropriately insulated from hindsight.”

Staff Lived Experience

The panel welcomed the Vice-Chancellor’s recent Town Hall clarification regarding the historic “compact” between staff and the University:

“I understand that the compact you felt about working for a university has now been broken. You know, the compact where… you had a secure job for life in a comfortable environment with a low workload.”

Panel members congratulated the Vice-Chancellor on her correction of a persistent misunderstanding within the sector, agreeing that widespread reports of sustained 50–80 hour working weeks were entirely consistent with a low workload when understood within a modern, delivery-focused and outcomes-aligned institutional framework.

The sector’s reliance on discretionary labour, routinely extending far beyond contracted hours, was further welcomed as a significant institutional strength, enabling current levels of activity without the unnecessary constraint of formal workload limits, and as evidence of a mature and high-performing organisational culture, for which the Vice-Chancellor was also commended.

Estates Strategy and Capital Investment

The panel highlighted the University’s £80 million investment in the Castle Meadow project, noting its significance as a major strategic estates initiative of a type unmatched in the UK higher education sector. Particular value was attributed to the insight brought by panel members directly involved in its development and delivery.

While reviewing the Vice-Chancellor’s ongoing management of the project, the panel highlighted the institution’s agile approach to post-acquisition strategy. Earlier reflections that “as we’ve now bought this campus, we need to find a good use for it” were cited as indicative of a flexible, opportunity-led model of capital deployment unburdened by extensive financial modelling or detailed analysis. The Vice-Chancellor was commended for maintaining continuity in this approach.

Student Engagement

The panel welcomed the Vice-Chancellor Q&A sessions as a wholly positive example of student engagement in practice. The introduction of enhanced security measures, including bag searches prior to entry, was commended as helping to place students at ease and create a reassuring environment for constructive dialogue, aligned to UoN’s institutional values. Panel members noted that these arrangements reduced the risk of unstructured contributions and ensured that student voice could be expressed within clearly defined and appropriately controlled parameters, supporting students in developing a clearer understanding of the Vice-Chancellor’s strategic vision.

Rankings and Reputation

The panel also commended the Vice-Chancellor for her continued emphasis on the University’s performance in the QS rankings, noting the strategic advantage of a system in which institutional standing is shaped through targeted engagement with professional networks. This was recognised as a highly efficient mechanism through which universities could enhance their position by actively encouraging participation in reputation surveys, without unnecessary reliance on underlying teaching or research outcomes.

Panel members further observed that traditional academic expectations of methodological rigour and objectivity were of diminishing relevance in this context, with one noting that “the ability of institutions to mobilise their networks to recognise excellence provides a sufficiently robust basis for evaluation.”

The panel recommended that the Vice-Chancellor’s focus on league table performance be further strengthened through the formalisation of a peer engagement framework, Bilateral Academic Collaboration and Knowledge-Sharing through Collegial Recognition And Trusted CHannels, to be rolled out as part of the next QS reputation management process.

Summary of Outcomes and Strategic Forward Positioning

The panel concluded that the Vice-Chancellor had demonstrated strong and consistent leadership across all areas of review, with no material issues identified. The process was widely regarded as a valuable exercise in reinforcing accountability, confirming that existing arrangements remain effective and appropriately aligned with institutional priorities.

No further action was required.

On behalf of the UCU Branch Committee