Quick Reminders

• Our Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday 4 September 2025 at 13:00, online. If you’d like to stand for a role on the BU UCU Executive Team, please submit your nomination form by noon 7 August. If you have a motion to present, please submit that by 21 August.
• We maintain our Member Guidance for ASOS and how to protect yourself during the restructuring; if there’s anything you’d like adding to it, please let us know.
• If you need to report a general issue regarding the restructuring or issues in the uni, please use our General Reporting Form. If you would like assistance with an individual case, please submit a Casework Pro Forma.
• Our wellbeing survey is still live. Get everyone you know to fill it out!

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Here’s the latest on the restructuring process, VR fallout, and union action. This update covers developments since the 24 July Sit-Rep.

Redundancy Process: Policy Breaches and Governance Failures

Following the 30 July JCNC, BU UCU formally documented serious concerns regarding the university’s minuted statement that they are complying with the BU Code of Practice for Redundancy. These concerns include:

• No appeals process despite members being told otherwise. BU’s own Redundancy Code of Practice outlines a right to appeal and a process; management has informed us they will not be permitting appeals.
• Unlawful application of selection criteria derived from the Academic Career Framework (ACF), which was never agreed for use in redundancy decisions.
• Failure to provide reasonable adjustments during interviews and selection, a potential breach of the Equality Act.
• Ongoing misinformation in consultation meetings, undermining trust in HR and line managers as reliable sources.
• Lack of documented processes for scoring, decision-making, or standardisation.

Full details were shared with the VC and senior managers in a letter sent 31 July 2025.

VR Eligibility Timeline: More Misinformation

Let’s be absolutely clear: you remain eligible for Voluntary Redundancy until you walk into your interview for your at-risk post. Merely submitting an application does not disqualify you. We’ve forced management to confirm this after they said otherwise in consultation meetings.

The disconnect between what HR and line managers say in meetings and what senior management claims to be policy is staggering. It leaves members at risk of making irreversible decisions based on false information.

Final Pay Chaos for VR Leavers

We’ve received alarming reports from members who took VR:

• Excessive PAYE deductions due to lump-sum processing of PILON and holiday pay
• Potential NI overcharges due to lack of averaging
• Holiday pay omitted entirely in some cases

This is creating unnecessary financial hardship. UCU and UNISON have jointly written to demand clarification, remedy, and assurances for remaining leavers.

External Partnerships and Intellectual Property

During this week’s JCNC, UCU raised concerns about academic staff being contacted directly by a prospective international partner organisation, SIRM, requesting access to their teaching materials.

Senior management acknowledged the incident and attributed it to a “misunderstanding,” possibly stemming from SIRM’s partnerships with other research-intensive institutions where such material-sharing is routine. BU’s leadership stated that they did not authorise this outreach and that they have already advised SIRM to cease such requests.

UCU has requested written confirmation that BU:

• Did not permit SIRM to contact staff

• Will not permit unsolicited access to staff intellectual property in current or future partnerships

We were assured this documentation will be provided.

We further queried whether this incident has prompted any reconsideration of SIRM’s suitability as a partner. Senior management responded that no agreement with SIRM has been finalised, and that BU is following a new Strategic Partnerships Policy intended to ensure low-risk, high-quality collaborations. Any new partnerships must pass through both the Strategic Partnerships Board and the University Board for approval.

We will continue to monitor this situation and press for robust protections for staff intellectual property, academic freedom, and informed consent in any external partnership agreements. If you’ve been contacted directly by SIRM or any other external partner, please let us know.

Dignity and Respect Violations

In response to a misuse of the Dignity & Respect Policy at JCNC, BU UCU sent an open letter asserting that it is management, not staff, in breach. We cc’d all members on that letter, so check your emails. We cite:

• Retaliation against those raising complaints
• Ignored grievances
• Staff pressured to stay silent
• Women in STEM disproportionately at risk

The letter is clear: BU is failing to uphold its own policy. If unaddressed, we will escalate these breaches externally.

University Leadership Appointments: Gaps, Cronyism & Risk

• Critical gaps in line management leadership persist. Despite repeated assurance that interim and substantive appointments would fill the void left by departing Heads of School and senior academic leaders, we still await comprehensive staffing updates. BU UCU continues to warn members that pressure to “extend” voluntary line‑management roles is union‑protected. No one can or must be penalised for declining these roles.
• Lack of new permanent leadership appointments is alarming. As of today, no fixed-term or permanent appointments have been announced for many key positions (e.g. Head of School, Associate Deans). The university continues relying on interim arrangements and voluntary cover, exacerbating instability and risking breaking governance commitments.
• Concerns about senior hires from the VC’s former institution. We remain deeply uneasy about the appointment of a new Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Vice‑Chancellor, both recruited from the VC’s previous university (VC employed 2022-24, DVC 2023-25, COO 2024-25). In particular, Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) has recently attracted negative attention:
  • CCCU has been named as one of six UK universities hit hardest by student loan fraud investigations, with £7.1 m of fraudulent loans linked to its name since 2022: more than any other institution in the scandal that led to DfE scrutiny.
  • Its reputation continues to decline sharply; for example, it preceded BU in closing academic programmes entirely (e.g. English Literature) due to “not viable” applicant numbers.
  • In May 2023, in a “regulatory first”, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) withdrew approval for CCCU’s midwifery programme “in the best interests of women, babies and families,” citing serious safety concerns in student placement environments that failed to meet required safety standards.
  • These developments pose serious questions about whether BU is inheriting leadership from an institution with governance challenges, what role our current management played in these previous missteps, and whether our university will find itself in a similar or worse situation as a result of their hire.

Still No Strategy. Still No Documents.

Despite months of requests, we still have not received:

• The business case for restructuring
• Scoring and decision-making criteria
• Risk assessments
• Governance documentation
• Any proper response to trade union feedback

Documents we have received confirm that no clear strategy exists. What we’re witnessing is reactive, piecemeal crisis management.

Workload: Building Power, Not Just Models

We’re fighting attempts to impose unagreed workload allocations. Coming soon (we’re working really hard to research and produce these while everything else is going on!!!):

• Self-drafting tool for creating your own WLP
• Member-led WLP Working Group
• New workload survey to expose systemic overwork

A Note on Line Management Roles

You can decline to stay in a line management role beyond your term, and you cannot be punished for doing so. This is union-protected action. BU’s leadership vacuum is not your responsibility to fill.

If you’re considering extending or taking a LM role, ask:

• Are you empowered, or exploited?
• Are you supported, or scapegoated?
• Can you resist harm, or will you be made complicit?

In Solidarity

We’re tired. We know many of you are too. But we are not giving up. The more we share knowledge, challenge injustice, and defend each other, the stronger we become.

Make good trouble, and illegitimi non carborundum.

—
BU UCU Exec Team