Collective Consultation meeting, June 11th 2026

Financial Situation and Business Change Documents

UNISON, UNITE and UCU joint report

The first collective consultation meeting focused on the financial situation of the university and the stated aim of reducing pay costs further through the proposed redundancy exercise. The Trade Unions reiterated our demand for compulsory redundancies to be taken off the table and for the need for senior leaders to offer a pay cut to help with the financial situation and as an act of solidarity with University workers. 

We discussed non-pay costs for 25/6 and onwards, including external consultancy and service fees and the Trade Unions were offered further opportunities to engage with the Chief Financial Officer about non-pay costs (including via email). We also discussed methodologies for student number forecasts and whether management were expecting to re-forecast over the summer based on revised student number data.  We were told that the intention was not to re-forecast in the summer, as final student numbers do not become clear until well into the semester. The university will instead be analysing numbers based on the potential range of final student numbers and associated risk (a risk margin calculation). 

On the topic of BCDs, the Trade Unions asked questions about the approach to pooling that pools at role rather than across roles which has produced pools of 1 or 2 in some areas of the university. We were told the university is open to considering alternative proposals on this through collective consultation. UCU asked about the creation of new roles in some BCDs which do not seem dedicated redeployment roles and collectively the Trade Unions raised concerns about some BCDs, such as those in MAH and in DSE, which seem to lack transparent rationales for the distribution of at-riskness when compared with other Faculties or Divisions’ BCDs. We were told that addendums could be added. We also informed the university that some of the new Job Descriptions are still missing from the Share Point site. For these reasons we informed the university that colleagues are being denied the opportunity to be meaningfully consulted on the information that was shared with the university community since collective consultation was launched.

The Trade Unions also gained confirmation that additional 1-1s for at risk staff could be available on request. 

Next collective consultation meeting: June 18th, EDI-related issues.