New Directorates structure: all you need to know

Collaboration that will enable our future growth and sustainability is supported by the new Directorates structure for Professional Services, which officially comes into effect on 1 August 2024 across our University systems.

This model, which reduced our 18 former Functions down to eight Directorates, is designed to minimise complexity and help our teams work more efficiently and collaboratively. Each Directorate is led by a director reporting directly to a member of the University Executive Board (UEB).

The Directorates are:

• Human Resources
  Led by Claire Rolstone
  Reporting to Chief Strategy Officer & University Secretary –Dr Richard Messer
• Digital
  Led by Stuart Brown
  Reporting to Chief Strategy Officer & University Secretary – Dr Richard Messer
• Finance
  Led by Andrew Grice*
  Reporting to Vice-Chancellor – Professor Robert Van de Noort
• Estates
Led by Andrew Casselden
Reporting to Chief Strategy Officer & University Secretary – Richard Messer
• Student Experience and Education
  Led by Alex Slater
  Reporting to Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) – Professor Peter Miskell
• External Relations
  Led by Fiona Blair
  Reporting to Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) – Dr Caroline Baylon
• University Corporate Services
  Led by Julie Rowe
  Reporting to Chief Strategy Officer & University Secretary – Dr Richard Messer
• Research and Innovation
  Led by Dr Karen Henderson
  Reporting to Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) – Professor Parveen Yaqoob

*Andrew Grice is also a member of UEB

What’s changing from 1 August?

Professional Services teams have already begun working to the new structure, following the creation of the new Directorates in October 2023. In this time, Directors have worked with other senior leaders to find efficiencies and meet the financial challenges that we face as an institution.

However, during this interim period, many systems were still based on the Functions structure.

This full transition to the new structure from 1 August 2024 means that each of our eight Professional Services Directorates is now fully embedded within our financial and corporate governance systems.

The main changes are:

• Heads of Directorates take full budgetary authority and operational oversight for their areas of responsibility
• We will move away from be referring to ‘Functions’ and use ‘Directorates’ in formal University communications and governance processes.
• The Directorate that includes Legal Services, the Planning and Strategy Office and Governance is renamed University Corporate Services.
• Executive support colleagues supporting UEB members and other senior colleagues will now sit within Governance alongside secretariat colleagues in the newly formed Executive and Governance Office team.
• A separate department within University Corporate Services will support the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor in their work.

In practice, you may not notice an immediate change: you will still work with colleagues across the University as you have done before. Over time, you may notice new opportunities for collaboration and new ways of working as Directors seek new ways for their teams to better collaborate, maximise resources and make some processes more streamlined.

The new Senior Leadership Group, which comprises members of UEB, Heads of School and Heads of Directorate are working towards delivery of plans, which will form the basis of the 2025/26 planning round, to achieve the collective institutional financial savings and deliver our ambitious student recruitment targets.