It is clear to us from emails, questions and comments shared with us in relation to the July all-staff talk with UEB that staff are very worried about the consequences for staff and students arising from the Professional Services hiring freeze and from senior management plans to further reduce the amounts spent on staff costs (both academic and PS).

Your questions and comments are informing our discussions with senior management and importantly are shaping our strategy to resist any unjustified cuts in 2026-27. Colleagues who may have missed recent emails can find our key areas of concerns set out on the emails from your branch committee dated July 17th and July 20th (the latter containing specific high-level points).

During the 21st July  all-staff talk, the VC asserted that there are no plans for large scale cross-institutional redundancies at Reading, but as we well know, such assurances come with giant caveats. The VC noted things could change (as one might imagine) and also that due to the scale of ‘savings’ needed during 26-27, redundancies as part of targeted restructurings are really possible.

While the VC noted that nothing is yet finalised, he also stated that UEB would be working on a number of these changes over the summer. We are paying close attention to this and to refining our branch strategy accordingly, especially given that some members are currently using well-earned leave.

Any redundancies, if they do arise, will need to be accompanied by formal steps for consultation with the trade union. So please continue to alert us if you or colleagues are approached in this regard or if you see any red flags over the summer.

We have had a helpful meeting earlier this week with the Chief Financial Officer, to discuss the accounts. It is early days yet but a further meeting with him is now in the diary for September and we are expecting to meet on a monthly basis till the issues are bottomed out. We are still awaiting from the VC a confidential report re: the outsourced internal auditors’ review around matters such as the “financial challenges”.

Members should be assured that while we do seek details to ensure accuracy, your committee remain focussed on big picture questions. Your committee is also very clear that we must be open-minded while at the same time thinking critically about senior management assertions (rather than accepting them at face value). For example: Does it make overall sense to us when senior management say that we have achieved and surpassed our budget target for 2025-26 while at the same time saying that they wish to deliver even more reductions to staff costs in 2026-27 (ie that if we are thinking of this as something of a marathon journey that ends with wiping out the so-called deficit, we are now already further ahead than we should be at this point in the race and we have surpassed the so-called deficit reduction targets at this point. Is it fair or indeed sustainable that staff need to run faster at this point and deliver even more cuts?. How does all this make sense if senior management are authorising spending of large amounts on system upgrades or building costs (URS), or external consultants, while demanding that staff continuously tighten belts?

Members (and the committee) should not and will not be very sympathetic to senior management trying to paint our hard-won savings as grounds for further accelerated cuts to staff costs, simply because they would now like to prioritise spends on consultants, building costs and IT systems? A further email will follow about our views on this as we reconcile the figures.

Staff continue to write to us to share deep concerns regarding the excessive spend on consultants in a number of PS areas, and we are acutely aware of the pressures being put on technology teams on the ground to deliver changes at an accelerating speed. Detailed committee discussions with management on this continue, and we will share further information in due course. But the scale of the costs for external consultants that we have seen so far is eye-wateringly large, and vindicates member worries.

Your committee has asked and received confirmation that the Staff Student Ratio (SSR) methodology that is informing UEB  decisions with respect to the reshaping of academic areas, has not been refined further since the last version we scrutinised last year. This is definitely giving us pause for concern as this methodology has been shown by our members to be disconnected from the realities on the ground. The SSR should not be being used as the basis for cuts, until rectified and made much more robust. Members need look no further as to its flawed logic, than the brutal cuts in Chemistry at UoR, using these very rough SSRs as part of the public rhetoric.

Working more efficiently and using automation or AI appears to be the new mantra from senior management, particularly in PS areas. We have highlighted to senior management, staff concerns that, especially in technology-related decisions, this push for efficiency has actually resulted in management spending more and more money on new (and what seem to us to be poorly justified) technology providers, and replacing perfectly adequate (if not perfect) technology systems with brand new and much more expensive ones. What is also concerning is that these changes are tying the university into very expensive, new, recurring contract costs from IT providers. Members have raised with us concerns that all this appears to be being done in ways that are pushing colleagues very hard (and causing associated health and safety problems) towards even burnout and by ignoring the voices of specialist colleagues who are cautioning management against such changes. There is a valid concern that plans to make these drastic changes are based on a flawed logic. While the plan is ostensibly to replace old systems and drive efficiencies by bringing new ones that are compatible with the planned AI overlay, all this rests on overestimating what AI can really deliver. There are also the huge additional costs which mean that the only people who will benefit are the IT consultants and software providers earning recurring fees, and not our staff or  students.

Since my last email to you and indeed over the past months, your committee has also been working carefully on branch matters including efforts to address casualisation, discrimination and we also continue to contribute to discussions re policy changes. We know that these policy points (whether on progression, or disciplinaries etc) can adversely affect colleagues’ day-to-day working lives, especially if the union does not pay sufficient attention. We are grateful to departmental reps, activists and caseworkers who help us grapple with these.

Your committee will continue to send you regular emails to keep you updated of any evolutions to the big picture. I hope those of you (especially PS colleagues) who are working very hard over the summer period know we are conscious of your efforts, and that those who are taking some time off actually manage to get some rest. Please continue to write to me cc’ing Ellen and Colette.

Best wishes

Deepa Driver

(Branch President, Reading UCU)