Staff Against PAS Committee
c/o Chris Drake
TOB1, Earley Gate
Mr Christopher Fisher
President of Council of the University of Reading
Delivered via Richard Messer
15 April 2016
Dear Christopher,
We write to confirm to you the result of our poll calling for a Vote of No Confidence in the Vice Chancellor in his capacity as leader of the Senior Management Team. 1213 votes were counted, of which 1071 were in support of the vote: this amounts to 88.3% of the votes received. Based on the figures in the last published Report and Accounts, this equates to 35% of the current workforce expressing no confidence and 5% expressing confidence.
Our concerns remain unchanged. We firmly believe that unless urgent steps are taken, the university will not be in a position to continue with business as normal after August 1. As academics, technicians and administrators, we work on a daily basis with students and are committed to the success of each student and of the University. We fully understand the systems that exist at present, and the hazards of rapid and wide scale change. We can already see the adverse consequences of the restructuring, the loss of key staff and the dangers of the process changes. The teams responsible for implementing these changes have given us no information which reassures or convinces us that they understand the implications of what they plan. We are particularly concerned about a large net loss of administrative capacity, research student activity and about vulnerable students. Years of essential expertise is being lost: this is not easy to replace and will leave some areas denuded of crucial support and knowledge. We do not want to see this university fail.
We ask that you call an emergency meeting of Council in order to discuss these issues. Some of them were raised under AOB in the last meeting of Council by RUSU, but these were not actually discussed. We are in the process of preparing packs of documents and will send these to all Council members next week.
You may wish to know that we are also in the process of taking legal advice over our concerns.
We assure you of our commitment to the future of the University and the welfare of our students and staff.
We look forward to your reply.
With kind regards,
Chris Drake
Nick Bardsley
Nikos Georgantzis
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein
Sue Mott
Sally Pellow
and 38 further members of the Staff Against PAS Committee
on behalf of 1071 members of staff at the University of Reading