We received a response from the Remuneration Committee on 06/03/25. You can read the letter here, which states that the pay award decision was taken in October 2024 based on 2023/24 performance. The committee has decided not to revise its original decision to award SMT a pay increase.
The letter highlights areas of achievement for the University in 2023/24: partnership developments (we have argued that there is an over-reliance on these high-risk partnerships, there have been investigations into some of these partnerships leading to the ending of some contracts following teach-out, and the Office for Students is keeping a watchful eye on institutions with a high number of partnerships); and the growth in overseas students (which has evaporated this academic year).
As a reminder to members, the University announced in 2023-24 the need to make £10m savings, made colleagues in the Centre for Languages and Linguistics compulsory redundant, and approximately 60 staff were made redundant via an Enhance Voluntary Redundancy scheme. This is not acknowledged in the letter.
The letter does acknowledge that student recruitment numbers in 2024-25 were ‘disappointing, it was also acknowledged that work had now started on the reshaping and redesign of the University to help ensure financial sustainability’. There is NO MENTION of the need to make £20m savings and the 400+ JOB LOSSES in the letter. It should be noted that the decision of the Remuneration Committee, in October 2024, was taken AFTER the data on student recruitment was known, and after the Transformational Change Programme was launched.
The letter also states that ‘no member of SMT is granted a pay award unless their performance is rated as Excellent in the annual appraisal process’. UCU would not, therefore, expect any member of SMT to achieve this rating this academic year, given the poor student recruitment and retention, the poor financial planning that has led to the need to save £20m so urgently and by the end of July 2025, and the lack of any plan for an alternative to staff job cuts to make the bulk of these savings. The uncompassionate, delayed, and inaccessible communications of the proposals of the TCP and the inconsistences in each Strand’s approach (plus the different processes for some academic schools which have gone through redundancy consultation outside of the TCP), plus the refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies or to offer an Enhanced Voluntary Redundancy scheme alongside the TCP redundancy consultations, should also be factored into SMT performance analysis at appraisal.
CCCU UCU will consider how we can facilitate members to feedback to the Remuneration Committee on SMT performance this year so they can take this into account, and whether to respond further to the letter.
If you have views on the committee’s decision to go ahead with the second instalment of the pay award to SMT, or on how the branch should respond, please come to our next General Branch Meeting on Wednesday 12th March at 1230-1400 – look out for a reminder invite in your email inboxes soon!