Minutes of the General Meeting Held on Tuesday, 7Th October 2008

Minutes of the General Meeting held on Tuesday, 7th October 2008.

Chair: Karen Jackson.

1. Address by the Vice-Chancellor.

The Chair welcomed the Vice-Chancellor to the meeting. He had been asked to give a short talk on the following question:

How far should we go towards running a University as a business?"

The V-C recognised that there were different views on this question and some would regard the University as a business. However, in offering fixed-price products (i.e. Degrees) the University does not operate in a market, although there is increasing pressure to lift the cap on fees.

The V-C divided his talk into three sections:

• No option – matters relating to HEFCE.

These related to targets and regulations concerning financial management. To an extent, the University Council were equivalent to the Board of a company.

• Business Processes – To explore how we work and within this section the V-C listed:

Understanding resources – HEFCE, Fees, Knowledge Transfer, Research income.

Spread risk – noting that the University is in the top 10 for international students.

The importance of focussing on schools and departments.

Effective use of time – workloads and research time.

Demographic changes from 2010

Fees – subject dependant?

• Risk – the Balanced Scorecard:

The heart of the University is informed by its academic strategy and, therefore, not simply a business.

Vision of 5 years from now for Schools presently undergoing change.

In discussion, three points were noted:

• Several of the new policies introduced in the University (e.g. plagiarism) were not impact-assessed in relation to the workload model. Hence their full economic cost to the University was not known.
• Noting that the private sector was increasing its involvement in HE, the V-C regarded this as inevitable in the sector.
• Regarding fixed-term contracts, the University had regard to employment regulations and was moving to permanent contracts. The University has a relatively low number of F-T staff.

The Vice-Chancellor was thanked for his address.

2. Apologies for Absence.

Were received from: M Bloj, C Chambers, L Cummings, M Dailey, S Duncan, R Espindola, C Higgison, C Kelly, R Lister, M Macey, J Porter, S Sheard, C Weatherill, J Whitelock.

3. Minutes of Previous Meetings.

The unconfirmed Minutes of three meetings had been published on the UCU website:

3.1General Meeting held on 31st March 2008 – were approved

3.2Extraordinary General Meeting held on 2nd May 2008 –were approved, subject to one correction.

3.3Annual General Meeting held on 18th June 2008 – were approved.

The Minutes of the AGM had been circulated to give members details of officers and committee for 2008-09 and included the committee’s report for 2007-08.

The confirmed Minutes would be published on the Local Association’s website.

4. Matters Arising from the Minutes.

There were no matters arising not otherwise on the Agenda.

5. President’s Report.

Three matters were reported under this item:

5.1Managing Staff Reductions.

Andy Scally gave a brief report on the situation in the School of Health Studies. In seeking substantial reductions, approximately 50 staff had expressed interest in the voluntary redundancy scheme. The University’s remuneration committee had met and it now appeared that the number of staff reductions would be less than the original estimates, probably of the order of 15-20 staff. A further meeting would take place shortly at which more information was required, including impact assessments. The situation on staff reductions had now removed the likelihood of compulsory redundancy.

There was no substantial change with respect to the School of Informatics and some reductions were still sought. Some confusion was reported on meetings being held and the procedure adopted for interviewing staff. The LA Committee was keeping the matter under review and urged members to have a UCU representative present at meetings to ensure fairness and equality.

5.2Trade Union Advisory Group (TUAG).

Dave Ewen had little to report on this item other than the change for the staff pay slips which could soon to be accessed from the website. Paper copies will be available for some categories of staff and if requested.

5.3Health & Safety

Chris Hope reported on the Stress Steering Group which had been set up. Since stress had been a major factor in earlier surveys a new questionnaire was being drafted for circulation to all staff.

6. Any Other Business.

A meeting of the Fixed-term Working Group would be notified to follow the successful inaugural meeting held in June.

7. Date of Next Meeting.

The provisional date for the next meeting was Tuesday, 18th November, but a firm date would be notified.

The meeting closed at 1400 hours.

Peter Linley

LA Secretary. ()

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