VC financial challenges update following Council

The following email was sent to all colleagues on 10 July 2023 by Robert Van de Noort, Vice-Chancellor

Dear colleagues,

Following the Council meeting on 3 July, I wanted to update you on our progress with addressing our financial position and remind you about the all-staff briefing on Wednesday, 12 July, at 14:00.

I am very pleased to say that, following considerable discussion and scrutiny, Council approved the package of UEB proposals for addressing the financial challenges that I talked through in my last update in May.

The impact of the current economic situation is increasingly visible across the sector, including recent media coverage of compulsory redundancies at other universities. So I am particularly grateful that Council has shown confidence in our approach and a willingness to support us to implement a plan staged over several years, focusing both on savings and income growth.

I will share with you a bit more about next steps at Wednesday’s all-staff briefing and, in the meantime, I encourage you to visit our Staff Portal information pages for more detailed updates. My aim is to allow as much of our session on Wednesday as possible to be devoted to your questions and feedback.

Importantly, Council clearly expressed its concern about the ongoing issues for staff around workload, morale and wellbeing and the potential impact on student experience. While members of Council agreed that the longer-term risk presented by a failure to address the University’s financial sustainability would ultimately be more damaging, they strongly urged that staff and student wellbeing must continue to be a critical part of the decision-making and implementation process.

I fully understand that the implications of all this work for colleagues and students are considerable. That is why stakeholder engagement and proper change management are being embedded in all elements of this work as we progress, and I can talk more about this on Wednesday.

While we cannot easily alleviate the anxiety and workload created by change, we can do our very best to manage that change in a way that properly considers our people, not just on each project but across the whole programme of change.

I want to say how much I appreciate everyone’s ongoing commitment to our shared purpose. The recent announcement that we have risen considerably in the latest QS World Rankings, to 169^th in the world, is a tribute to the excellence of the work that you are all doing. It is proof that throughout all this we are keeping the key principles of our Strategy at the centre of what we do.

I also want to acknowledge the contribution that many colleagues made to the proposals that went to Council and to the work to begin implementing them. Change, even for a longer term benefit, is always hard for a community, and it is exactly this type of commitment that will see us travel this path successfully.

I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on Wednesday.

Kind regards,

Robert