loading . . . This is a live page of all the redundancies, restructures, reorganisations, and closures taking place across the sector at the moment. Solidarity to all. This sector is vital to the country’s future and the vandalism to it unconscionable.
The universities on this list are the ones with announced and confirmed redundancies as well as restructures and interventions that drastically transform the working and learning conditions in their institution. More are rumoured about, and even more have been shrinking staff by not renewing fixed-term contracts or reducing hours of fractional contracts, or are not implementing agreed pay rises. These cuts are not as visible but are equally impactful, reducing programmes, stretching remaining staff, failing to have any flexibility when a member of staff falls out and the ensuing delays of support for students, etc.
Tag us on socials (@qm_ucu), comment below, or email the social media team if you know of any others we should add — ideally include a link to reliable information. Please do not email the coordinator address, those are other teams in the branch.
1. Most recent updates
2. Current redundancy & Restructure programmes
3. Redundancies mapped
4. In recent years
5. Reports, responses, and counter-arguments
6. Where to start?
#### Most recent updates
(in the past fortnight, approximately; last updated 26 April 2025)
* Bristol is trying to cut its Centre for Academic Language & Development
* Cardiff Metropolitan announced compulsory redundancies
* The University for the Creative arts is undergoing a Professional Service review which would slash headcount by one third and downgrade remaining roles
* Derby put compulsory redundancies on the table, in particular targeting senior academics
* Greenwich is proposing restructures
* Lincoln opened another Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme.
* Middlesex is cutting £20 million in operational budget in a restructure of professional services
* Queen Mary (us again…) is now at 59 possible redundancies in the next 90 days, through restructures in the Faculty of Science & Engineering
* Robert Gorden’s VC declared that they were looking at a “maximum of 60 compulsory redundancies”
#### Current redundancy & Restructure programmes
1. **Aberdeen** , where management in November 2023 announced they would fold Modern Languages. The public response has been immense, compiled here by Aberdeen ucu. In March, they announced compulsory redundancies would be off the table after all. The university is looking for £12 million for the current academic year though it is unclear whether this is a deficit or a shortfall against projected cash generation.
2. **Aberystwyth** is looking to cut 200 jobs searching for £15 million. This would reduce staff by 8-11 percent. Previously, the university announced they would axe the entire postgraduate teaching course (PGCE).
3. **Aston** University put 60 academics in the college of engineering and physical sciences at risk of redundancy. There is a Voluntary Severance Scheme open for the entire university.
4. **Bangor** opened a voluntary severance scheme in autumn 2024. In previous years, Bangor has been cutting posts and programmes, including its entire Chemistry department. Bangor University’s International College is cutting in administrative staff and permanent tutors. Bangor University International College is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oxford International Education Group (OIEG), a private provider that operates under Bangor University’s brand identity. In February 2025, Bangor announced they were looking to cut 200 members of staff in search of £15 million savings.
5. **Bedfordshire** restructured in the summer of 2023 and all but closed Performing Arts Cluster (Acting BA, Dance & Professional Practice BA and Performing Arts BA), made redundant 8 members of staff in Media, and reduced the School of arts and Creative Industries dramatically. In Spring 2024, they again opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme for all staff. By March 2025, it was announced the university was looking to cut 240 jobs with Professional Services particularly affected. Management is reducing Faculties and Schools at hyperspeed.
6. **Birkbeck** tried to cut 140 jobs in 2022 against a lot of pushback as this would destroy a unique institution with evening classes set up precisely to make higher education inclusive. They have since had to absorb further restructures. And in 2024, they are again ‘streamlining’ programmes as well as cutting hours from staff on Teaching & Scholarship contracts.
7. **Birmingham** launched a voluntary severance scheme in October 2024. They’re aiming to lose 300-400 ‘roles’. This comes on top of the university being investigated by the Health & Safety Executive over excessive workloads and the accompanying stress and mental health issues.
8. **Birmingham City** offered a Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme to all staff in February 2025 — with an email about the VC’s bold new vision and how those who don’t buy into it should leave…
9. **Bolton** has gone through two ‘Mutually Agreed Release Schemes’. MARS1 announced before Christmas 2023, around 40 left. In July 2024, a email revealed more talk about redundancies. The VC proudly announced the Office for Students agreed to a consultation on a name-change though…
10. The**Arts University Bournemouth** has opened a voluntary severance scheme. The terms of the scheme won’t achieve the cost saving aims, according to the joint campus unions’ calculations. By February 2025, management refused to rule out compulsory redundancies.
11. **Bournemouth** University has opened a voluntary severance scheme and compulsory redundancies are on the table. The university is also proposing to cut standard research hours allocation by 50% for all staff. They’re looking for £15 million which is a shortfall against projections. In March 2025, they closed multiple programmes for registration, including English, Law-and-Politics, Politics, Archaeology and Anthropology, Environmental Science, etc.
12. **Bradford** is cutting staff to find £10 million. In October 2024, their Chief Financial Officer confirmed that compulsory redundancies are on the table. By March 2025, management was looking to cut 300 posts, including in chemistry and film.
13. **Brighton** have been under restructure since 2023. Their senior management tried to make 130 members of staff redundant on 4 May 2023. They reached 100 days in their strike. In early January 2024, they were treated to another email announcing a voluntary severance scheme. And they ended the year with another VSS, targeted this time at two schools: Art & Media and Humanities & Social Sciences.
14. **Bristol** planned job cuts in the Centre for Academic Language and Development in March 2025. See this letter outlining the importance of the centre (to actually support international students whose fees pay for so much of the institution…), and questioning the inconvertibility of solely job cuts as a ‘solution’.
15. **Brunel** has opened a voluntary severance scheme. In October 2024, management announced a ‘resizing programme‘. The plan is for 130 FT academic positions to be made redundant, i.e. 14% reduction in academic staffing levels. In addition to the 130 academic jobs to be shed, 79 professional services jobs have been put at risk in the first of two waves of ‘organisational restructuring’ of professional services. See https://brunel.web.ucu.org.uk/ for details and some truly excellent campaigning materials.
16. **Canterbury Christ Church** is getting ready to ‘shrink staff’ and have opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme. English Literature, languages, linguistics, and a number of arts and creative industries courses are closing. In November 2024, CCCU management declared they need to save £20 million using their Transformation Programme, before fiscal year end in July 2025. They say 80% of that savings will need to come from letting go of staff. If the average saved per staff member was 50,000, that would be 320 FTE to save £16million. Or: about *one in five* staff members to go.
17. **Cardiff** ‘s VC wrote to all staff announcing a £35 million deficit; voluntary severance isn’t excluded, but the university is also looking at other ways of generating income. Previously, the university already announced it was planning to cut Ancient Languages. You can sign the petition against that here. In October 2024, the VC refused to rule out compulsory redundancies. Their third voluntary severance scheme will close in January 2025. In January 2025, they announced they are seeking to lose 400 colleagues.
18. **Cardiff Metropolitan University** has opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme. By April 2025, they moved on to compulsory redundancies.
19. **Chichester** cut ruthlessly into their humanities, including ending the Master by Research in the history of Africa and the African diaspora — terminating the contract of the first British person of African heritage to become a professor in history in the UK. Compulsory redundancies have reduced research and education.
20. **Chester** has opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme again. This is after they went through a gruelling restructure in 2021, putting 86 posts on the line. In March 2024 they announced they would close the Shrewsbury university campus.
21. The University for the **Creative Arts** ran a Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS) from Dec 24 to Jan 25 with approx 50 people accepted under the voluntary scheme. In Spring 2025, management is looking to review Professional Services alongside changes to the academic structure. The proposals include a reduction of headcount by one third, and downgrading many of the remaining roles. This is part of a £9.8m saving they are looking to make by 31 July 2025.
22. **Cumbria** is implementing with redundancies even though the article that was put out by their senior management acknowledges they made their financial targets and have grown by 30%…
23. **Coventry** , who have to make £100 million in savings. There is a BBC report and a discussion in University World News. Every department has been hit. In December 2024, the university announced drastic cuts and a transformation of what they are as an institution. All modern languages have all but disappeared, and by 2027 there will be no English language teaching either. In just one of the four colleagues they’re slashing 39 posts wholesale. Many more are forced onto fire-and-rehire, having to reapply for jobs but via a subsidiary, with much higher teaching load, and a much worse pension scheme (from TPS to AVIVA, and so with much lower employer contributions). The subsidiary, Coventry University Group, also doesn’t recognise the University and College Union, so staff’s union membership (and protection) is on the line.
24. **De Montfort University** is asking colleagues to take voluntary redundancy and are not ruling out redundancy. In previous years, they already tried to get rid of 58 colleagues — to public outrage in the petition against it. The branch’s analysis is forensic and a helpful template to draw inspiration from. UCU national helped the industrial action.
25. At **Derby** , management opened an ‘Enhanced Resignation Scheme’ in 2024. This comes after previous voluntary severance schemes in 2019 and in 2022, while the university marked income increase and a decrease in staff cost. In late Autumn 2024, they had a VS scheme aimed at Research Profs and Associate Profs. By April 2025, the university considered compulsory redundancies targeting half of its senior academics.
26. **Dundee** claimed job loses were ‘inevitable’ in November 2024, having already implemented hiring freezes and reducing operational spending. Staff was warned the university could close within two years unless drastic savings were made. This includes the removal of the budget to pay post-graduate researchers for teaching — taking away income and experience from early career colleagues and pushing even more work onto permanent staff. They still could spend thousands of pounds on business class flights and five-star hotels for their VC and a member of staff though. In March 2025, their interim VC announced they were trying to cut 632 jobs, on top of the posts already lost through hiring freeze. Together, that amounts to a quarter of all staff.
27. **Durham** had a Voluntary Severance Scheme open between November 2023 and February 2024. After the voluntary severance scheme wrapped up, insufficiently many people have applied, so the employer has decided to run it again. The scheme opened again 30 September 2024 which closed on 30 October 2024. In January 2025, they announced they wanted to get rid of 200 (!!) non-academic colleagues, in pursuit of which they opened a voluntary severance scheme. Read the Durham UCU branch statement, as well as message to members. Compulsory redundancies haven’t been ruled out, so the branch is getting ready to challenge this with industrial action.
28. **Edge Hill University** announced redundancies in the Creative Arts department, including compulsory redundancies. You can sign the petition challenging these cuts. In early February 2025, they announced they’re seeking to make another £10 million in saving through further staffing reductions *by July 2025*, with a voluntary severance scheme as well as calls for staff to reduce their contract hours. By April 2025, they lost hundreds of colleagues through voluntary severance.
29. **Edinburgh** announced job cuts in November 2024. In January 2025, they opened a voluntary severance scheme, which they extended in February 2025. And by the end of February 2025, they announced they were looking for £140 million (!!) or 10% of their of their annual turnover in savings. These cuts would be made based on the education portfolio.
30. In the Spring of 2024**, Essex** was planning to force academics on a 45-week teaching programme, which would essentially destroy the idea of university as no research could take place. They’re reneging on the (poor) pay increase negotiated nationally as well as on staff promotions to find £14m to deal with a _**shortfall**_, not deficit. In November 2024, they announced seeking to lose 200 members of staff to find £29 million savings, and changed the tone from ‘no department in particular is at risk’ to ‘no discipline is at risk’.
31. The University of **Exeter** has opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme (or ‘Exeter Release Scheme‘ as they call it…).
32. **Glasgow** put 80 staff members in Social and Public Health Sciences in at risk of redundancy in November 2024.
33. **Glasgow Caledonian** opened a ‘Mutual Severance Scheme‘ on 4 March 2024, and re-opened it in June.
34. **Gloucestershire** is discussing voluntary severance
35. **Goldsmiths** has been going through rough restructuring for the past few years. And now they’re there again. Management has claimed a £13.1m **shortfall** from budget (not deficit!). They’ve already recovered £10.1 through savings in recurrent costs through VSS, post deletions and cuts to research, and Goldsmiths has healthy cash reserves. The proposed cut of 130 posts would amount to 25% of staff. The local branch has set up a support fund to enable them challenging this; and they are sharing helpful resources. In the summer of 2024, Goldsmiths did indeed push through redundancies, including losing convenors of key and unique masters programmes.
36. **Greenwich** announced restructures in April 2025, on top of savings throughout the year. The proposed restructures will affect posts in the faculties, and staffing levels are being reviewed.
37. **Heriot-Watt** has opened a voluntary redundancy scheme aimed at senior grades (Assoc Prof and Professor) in (and currently only in) the School of Social Sciences. “Alternatives” are being offered, including reductions to working hours, unpaid career breaks for senior grades, and secondments to the Dubai campus.
38. The University of **Hertfordshire** is currently going through a redundancy process for several schools, including: 6 posts in Law, 5 posts in Creative Arts, and up to 16 posts in Health, Medicine and Life Sciences.
39. **University of the Highlands and Islands** has had multiple Voluntary Severance Schemes, redundancy rounds, and course closures affecting the constituent colleges — including closing entire campuses which served rural communities. Voluntary severance has been taken up with compulsory redundancies expected to follow over the summer.
40. **Huddersfield** put 100 jobs at risk in the umpteenth iteration of redundancy processes. In Spring 2024, management announced they were seeking 12% cut in staff (or 200 posts), all compulsory redundancies, after the waves of voluntary severance. This lead to the loss of the national nuclear research centre. Their management had offered £5000 one-off payment to those who took redundancy, to encourage uptake. In early July they tried to renege on that agreement.
41. **Hull** opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme in Spring 2024, through which about 100 members of staff left. In June 2024, the university announced even more staff redundancies, seeking another staff reduction of nearly 150. In August 2024, the university confirmed it would close the chemistry department because it does not deem the courses financially sustainable — read this blogpost articulating the vast ripple effect of this closure. In Autumn 2024, Hull was looking at a reduction of 1 in 10 in academic staff, and convened compulsory redundancy panels. Colleagues were made to leave in December 2024. Merely four months later, in April 2025, they opened the second Voluntary Severance Scheme.
42. In May 2024, **Keele** opened a voluntary redundancy scheme, inviting 2,300 staff members. Redundancy agreements will be statutory minimum only. By December 2024, they entered a new, more vicious rounds of cuts, this time targeted at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and including compulsory redundancies. £2.25m will be saved from academic staff posts, equating to the loss of 25-29 academic posts, 20-24 of which will be from the Humanities and Social Sciences. In December 2024, they announced another Voluntary Severance Scheme, which would be moved to compulsory redundancies if there wasn’t a big enough uptake. 100 colleagues spent their Christmas worrying for their jobs as they were at risk to be one of the 30-35 posts to be culled. The schools in the humanities and social sciences are most targeted but st risk are also Keele Business School and Allied Health Professions and Pharmacy. By March 2025, Keele moved to compulsory redundancies for first time in the history of the university. Fifty colleagues have been put at risk with 9 expected to be forced out.
43. **Kent** had a threat of compulsory redundancies, which some voluntary departures seemed to have averted, and then the compulsory redundancies came back. Since February 2024, they’ve got a portfolio of what has to go. By late March 2024, the university announced cutting some of the key departments in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, including Anthropology, Art History, Health & Social Care, Journalism, Music & Audio Technology, Philosophy/Religious Studies, Human Biology and Behaviour and the MSc in Ethnobotany. Kent is axing not only jobs (58 staff are at risk of redundancy), but entire programmes and departments. Kent also closed its quarter-century-old Brussels campus at short notice, giving staff no more notice than students, and not putting in place continuation measures for students — whose visas and life circumstances would allow moving to the UK. Staff face compulsory redundancy. Though in January 2025, the university opened yet another voluntary severance scheme, with a three-week turnover.
44. In 2024, **Kingston** put its world-renowned Philosophy department ‘under review’ by March 2025, they announced they would axe it. This comes after the university axed subjects that had been excelling in research for years, including Politics, International Relations, Human Rights, History, etc. in 2021-22. The local branch kept a record here. There have been voluntary severance schemes before, including in 2019. In February 2025, amid a search for £20 million in savings, the VC did not exclude compulsory redundancies. They seem to be pushing through redundancies at breakneck speed, talking about 90 days for redundancies of 20-99 job losses. See the response from the branch here, which is an excellent distillation of the way managers are running roughshod over legal and ethical obligations, seemingly in the hope that nobody has the energy to challenge this if they do it fast enough.
45. In the Spring of 2024, **Lancaster** terminated a number of fractional contracts. In October 2024, they opened a voluntary severance scheme. On 2 December 2024, all staff received an email declaring “for the University to be sustainable at the level of student recruitment we saw in 2024, current estimates show that we need to reduce the staff size by about 10-15% of where we are now – which translates to an approximate reduction of 400 full-time equivalent staff (i.e. staff across all categories) over the next two years, given our adjusted financial forecasts.”
46. The University of **Central Lancashire** is facing a deficit of £25 million and is seeking to make 5% of its staff redundant. They have opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme and is looking to cut 165 posts. 100 people left voluntarily, but in June 2024, management issued a further notice threatening up to 157 post, including compulsory redundancies. This comes after multiple restructures in the last few years, in 2019, 2021, 2023, and now 2024. In November 2024, they considered removing French, Spanish, German, Russian, TESOL (Teaching of English to speakers of other languages), Philosophy, Religion, Politics, International Relations and Chemistry.
47. **Leeds Beckett** opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme.
48. **Leeds Trinity** opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme in Autumn 2024.
49. **Leicester** has opened up a voluntary severance scheme in autumn 2024. This is after they went through a gruesome and ideologically-driven restructure. Those who got made redundant have recently won their employment tribunals. The employment tribunal judge’s ruling is available here. Several of those dismissed have written about their experiences in a new book _Shaping for Mediocrity: The Cancellation of Critical Thinking at Our Universities_ (published August 2024).
50. **Lincoln** is closing their language department, and has announced a voluntary severance scheme. They are looking to make 220 redundancies — about one tenth of all staff. Up to half may come from the initial VSS, but over 100 jobs will be scratched through either further schemes or compulsory redundancies. The sum of savings sought for keeps changing: it started at 20% of budget, which became £20 million, and then £30 million. Management has by now announced they already made savings of £24 million through VSS and other cost cutting measures but is not ruling out compulsory redundancies. In March 2025 they opened another Voluntary Severance Scheme. By April 2025, the university opened another “Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme” and refused to rule out compulsory redundancies in 2025.
51. **Liverpool** opened a Voluntary Leavers Scheme in February 2025.
52. **Liverpool Hope** had a Voluntary Severance Scheme open over Christmas 2023 for staff on Grade 7 and above — i.e.: getting rid of securely-employed and adequately-remunerated teaching & research posts. Watch out for upcoming fixed-term posts to do the same teaching, we guess?
53. **Loughborough** opened a voluntary severance scheme in Autumn 2024.
54. **St Mary’s University Twickenham** has opened a Mutual Resignation Scheme at the end of May 2024.
55. **Middlesex** has cut into arts in the first instance, broadening to devastating the entire research community. They closed the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture with the loss of 4 jobs, proposed removing the Interpretation & Translation academic area with the loss of 6 academic posts. Other smaller units have been closed one or two at a time, gradually escalating. While the Theatre Arts department still technically exists, all 13 members of staff in the department were put at risk of redundancy in the restructure. After repeated failures to properly consult with the UCU branch and staff affected throughout the process, just two of these staff have retained their jobs. Before this restructure was fully completed Middlesex University announced, without giving prior notice to the unions, that they are embarking on a further wide-scale restructure across the university where 181 jobs are now being ‘deleted’, taking the total to over 200+ potential job losses. Additionally, management has activated previously defeated plans to close the on site nursery which will impact both staff and students. In April 2025, they announced a further £20 million cuts in operational costs in Professional Services by the Summer.
56. **Newcastle** had a voluntary severance scheme across all faculties without targets or numbers in Spring 2024. In September 2024, the Newcastle VC announced they were facing a £35 million shortfall and therefore would resort to hiring freezes, freeze current contracts, and revise promotions and annual pay awards. A second voluntary severance scheme was opened aimed only at academics and management didn’t rule out compulsory redundancies. Promotion processes were halted for 2024 with no guarantee they would be resumed the next. By January 2025, the university announced they were seeking to make 300 FTE redundancies.
57. **Northampton** is seeking £19.3 million savings and had opened a voluntary severance scheme to 500 colleagues in June 2024. In July 2024, only 97 had applied. So in October 2024, they are talking about opening another voluntary severance scheme. Mere weeks later, they announced they would consider cutting programmes — including programmes students are on.
58. **Northumbria** is slashing staffing budget to find £12.5 million. Their ucu branch shared a petition to fight compulsory redundancies. They achieved that at the end of March: compulsory redundancies were ruled out thanks to the local branch’s efforts and solidarity from students and from across the country. But in November 2024, their management announced they would stop all business-and-language courses with immediate effect.
59. **Nottingham** has opened a Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS), following hiring freezes, cuts in non-pay budgets, and refusal to renew 500 fixed-term contracts. By April 2025, they were looking to cut 250 jobs.
60. **Open University** had a voluntary severance scheme in 2024 which targeted Associate Lecturers as well as staff in Professional Services. They opened another one in 2025.
61. **Oxford Brookes** on 15 November 2023 proposed folding their music department. Their branch outlines the communication here. In the first round in November, 20 people left through voluntary severance, and in the second round about 10 people left. In March 2024, they avoided many compulsory redundancies, though still not in music. In April 2024, another Voluntary Severance Scheme was announced, sent to over 800 members of staff. In the 2023/24 HESA financial data, the university was one of the most indebted established universities in the country (behind only the University of Northampton and the University of Surrey) in terms of its external borrowing as a proportion of its total income due to loans to cover new buildings.
62. The **Arts University Plymouth** has gone through voluntary redundancies and now compulsory ones.
63. **Plymouth** announced a round of cuts that will affect the Business School, Institute of Education, the Humanities (History, Art History, English, Politics), Engineering, Mathematics, Nursing and Medicine, and Partnerships. They started with a voluntary scheme in May 2024 with a planned move to compulsory in July. The university previously spent £27 million in severance payment in four years from 2016-17 to 2019-20. In 2024, they spent nearly 3 million in redundancy payment. They lost 91 colleagues but made a £24 million surplus in the financial year 2023-24.
64. University of St Mark & St John in Plymouth (**Plymouth Marjon**) proposed 27FTE redundancies in late November 2023. Roughly 24 FTE have left by Spring 2024.
65. **Portsmouth** has put 400 members of staff at risk. The university is planning to make 50 redundancies among full time academic roles but and the risk further affects staff in all roles; this elimination of a large numbers jobs in one swoop will effect a huge effect on the city. In July 2024, it was also announced that the university is planning to stop new staff from being able to access the Teachers Pension Scheme, in effect creating a ‘two-tier’ workforce. The university just made a £250m investment in estates though.
66. At **QMUL** , 60 colleagues already left via a Voluntary Severance Scheme which ran 6 March – 8 April 2024. Separately, there is a consultation about Professional Service staff running until 10 July, while the governing board is expected/feared on 11 July to sign off on the merger of two Schools, the School of English & Drama, and the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film. In February 2025, management started to get linemanagers to have one-on-one chats with colleagues in Professional Services to ‘encourage’ them to take voluntary severance (while heavily implying their post wouldn’t exist soon anyway…). They’re trying to cut 25% (!!) of all PS staff. On 12 March 2025, management opened a voluntary severance scheme for all PS colleagues and for academics in targeted Schools: School of Mathematical Sciences (SMS), School of Physical and Chemical Sciences (SPCS), Institute of Dentistry (IoD), Institute of Health Science Education (IHSE), William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI), School of Geography, School of History, School of the Arts (the school created by the merger of the Schools of English & Drama and the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film in the Summer of 2024). By 25 April, the **redundancy counter was at 59** , because of restructures in ITS, in the Education team in Science & Engineering, and in the PGR team in Humanities & Social Sciences. This number are actual job losses, and does not take into account voluntary severance numbers, the non-renewal of fixed-term contracts, and the failure to fill vacant posts. It is also before the impact of the university-side Professional Service restructure is clear, as well as the impact of the merger of academic Schools. We keep track of all info and news on this webpage.
67. **Queen Margaret** University, Edinburgh opened a Voluntary Exit Scheme.
68. In October 2024, **Queen’s University Belfast** announced it is seeking to cut 270 posts. Management claims it will do so via voluntary severance scheme, despite that being 5% of its workforce and VSS is unlikely to achieve that. They have not provided the unions with the legally required information. They opened the VSS on 3 February 2025 and let it run for only ten days, closing on 14 February.
69. **Reading** announced plans to shut down Chemistry, based on supposed underperformance in the National Student Survey and the Research Excellence Framework — both rather spuriously interpreted. By December 2024, and thanks to a lot of public outcry about the harm this closure would cause, the department itself would be saved, but there are still proposed cuts to academic staff. In January 2025, Reading opened a targeted Voluntary Severance Scheme based on their calculation of the student-staff ratio. English language, English literature, Maths, Statistics, Biomedical engineering, Environment, Art, Construction Management and Engineering are all targeted.
70. **Robert Gordon University** opened a voluntary severance scheme for qualifying staff across the university. 130 colleagues left through this scheme. In November 2024, the university announced making a further 135 post redundant. “The university said staff at risk would be offered voluntary redundancy and it hoped the need for compulsory redundancies would be limited.” — so one does wonder how ‘voluntary’ these redundancies are… In March 2025, the Principal emailed all staff to say the VSS hadn’t been sufficient and there would be a “maximum of 60 compulsory redundancies”. That is on top of the colleagues lost to more voluntary practices (their staff statistics page shows that between April 2024 and January 2025, they reduced their staff body count from 1728 to 1445 already).
71. **Roehampton** has once gain opened ‘Flexible Futures’ schemes to encourage staff to leave. This comes after they put half of their academics at risk in 2022. AdvanceHE was deeply involved in this slashing.
72. The **Royal Central School of Speech and Drama** has opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme in autumn 2024, without clear indication how many posts management wants to see go, or in which departments.
73. **Royal Holloway** announced a Voluntary Severance Scheme on 31 March 2025, without much prior discussion and only one Council meeting on 27 March to sign off on it. The local ucu branch has produced this useful set of clarifications and questions. This VSS comes after an already gruelling shrinking in 2019 and 2021.
74. **Sheffield** has put 100 jobs in the nuclear research centre at risk of redundancy. In recent years, Sheffield has been forced through so many restructures it is unclear what management is trying to achieve. In October 2024, their management announced more than a £50 million shortfall — i.e.: missed targets of management’s budgets. Staff members across the university are made to feel the squeeze resulting from these unrealistic projections of never-ending-growth, as the university seeks to save £23 million through Voluntary Severance Scheme. Departments in range of severances include civil engineering, materials engineering, journalism, and many more. Professional service staff are taking a disproportionate hit through Voluntary Severance – IT services, Accommodation and Commercial Services, the English Language Teaching Centre, and all professional services staff in Schools and Faculties are in scope for the scheme. Staff have passed a No Confidence vote in the VC and the executive board, and yet the VC got a new contract…
75. **Sheffield Hallam** is trying to appease banks, as reported in Times Higher Education. Mid-December 2023, they opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme. The local branch’s response to a briefing raised key questions. In March 2024, Hallam declared 120 staff faced redundancy. By April, that was 225 academic jobs up for axing, with up to 80 staff facing compulsory redundancy. In June 2024, the university announced a voluntary severance scheme for colleagues in Professional Services, seeking to cut 400 posts, or one in five of the professional service team.
76. **SOAS** is firing-and-rehiring staff in their Foundation Programme.
77. London **South Bank** University is predicting a £24 million deficit and therefore putting 297 members of staff at risk of redundancy, or almost one in five of academics at the university. They’re proposing to merge the 8 Schools into 5 Colleges, continuing the blandification of UKHE.
78. **South Wales** opened a voluntary severance scheme in March 2024 without articulating how much they have to save, how many people they want to leave, and whether the cost saving would go towards filling a deficit or a shortfall against target cash generation. In October 2024, they projected another £20 million **shortfall**, and didn’t rule out redundancies. In February 2025, the university is rumoured to £20 million in deficit and looking to cut staff and programmes and looking to cut even more staff and programmes.
79. **Staffordshire** is cutting 100 posts, as reported by the BBC. In September 2024, hundreds of jobs were ‘at risk’. By March 2024 Staffordshire had 70 redundancies of academic staff across most areas of the university. Many of these were via voluntary redundancy, others were forced closure including of two of the key research areas (in Archaeology and Bio Medical Science) with the loss of those teams. This was 10% of the academic staff. In January 2025 the university continues redundancies, 250 support staff have been at risk and there will be about 50 redundancies in February. This is 10% of the support staff, leaving areas such as timetabling and research administration virtually unresourced. In addition, the university has not yet implemented the Aug 2024 pay rise, and is outside of national pay bargaining again this year.
80. **Sunderland** is seeking to close the unique National Glass Centre. In July 2024, management announced a restructure that would reduce five faculties to three. In September 2024, they sought to make 1 in 10 redundant, a literal decimation, possibly done before Christmas. Previously, they already closed the university language scheme in 2018, and the degree programmes in languages in 2021.
81. **Surrey** already went through redundancies in 2019. That they’re back at the stage where they’ve opened a voluntary severance scheme shows how little redundancies solve the problem. This petition outlines the situation and urges a rethinking. The university is looking for £10 million but didn’t not outline how many posts they’re aiming to cut. Over Easter 2024, 130 staff took voluntary severance, and the university has announced 45 professional services and academic staff are at risk of redundancy.
82. In November 2024, **Sussex** announced they were looking to lose 300 colleagues via voluntary severance scheme, i.e.: roughly 12% of the full time work force at the university…
83. At **Swansea** , nearly 200 members of staff already left under a Voluntary Severance Scheme. In January 2025, the university recorded 342 colleagues had left, but that it would keep open the scheme for professional service staff. The university is looking for £30 million in savings.
84. **Teesside** opened a Voluntary Severance Scheme ‘to review how we deliver our business’… In autumn 2024, they moved to ‘Targeted Voluntary Redundancy’, with warnings that compulsory redundancies would follow if targets are not met. The destruction is compounded by undergraduate course closures, with Geography and Environmental Science affected.
85. **UCL** is getting rid of double figures of fixed term staff in their History department, drastically reducing the module offering, sacrificing student-staff long term support, and increasing the workload of remaining staff. **UCL** had a voluntary severance scheme in 2022-23. The Academic Board discussed it 13 September, the webpage went live 14 October, the Scheme itself was open for applications from 28 November 2022 to midnight Sunday 15 January 2023. Unions were not meaningfully consulted despite records to the contrary. In the autumn of 2024, more staff, in particular on Teaching & Scholarship contracts, lost their teaching opportunities. Many of these had been bought in to cover the overrecruitment of undergraduates in previous years.
86. **UEA** is back into threats to jobs. In recent years, the university got dramatically restructured, with many facing months of uncertainty about redundancies and a couple of hundred people leaving under voluntary severance schemes, and others denied salary uptick in line with promotion. Yet the VC causing this got a nice bonus upon departure. In October 2023, the new VC claimed they had ‘turned a corner‘ and that compulsory redundancies were off the table, yet in October 2024 they were once again in shrinking mode and not ruling out compulsory redundancies. In November 2024 it transpired 170 colleagues would lose their jobs yet again.
87. The**University of Wales Trinity Saint David** has gone through a round of Voluntary Severance already in 2024, which they reopened in November 2024. Their historic Lampeter campus is set to close, with all humanities teaching moving more than 20 miles away.
88. The **University of the West of England** announced they needed 100 colleagues to leave via a ‘voluntary’ severance scheme. In January 2025, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (validated by UWE) and key in ensuring education in drama, acting, and associated arts was available to students outside of London (and bringing us talents such as Olivia Colman, Jeremy Irons, and Daniel Day-Lewis), announced they will no longer taking be running their UG programmes from September 2025. All applicants for September 2025 will have their auditions fees returned.
89. **Winchester** was served notice of proposed cuts. The university is proposing job cuts of up to 40 jobs and detrimental changes to the workload allocation model.
90. **Wolverhampton** opened a Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme in July 2024. This comes after they threatened 250 jobs in July 2022, to fill a £20 million deficit. 138 colleagues were made to leave. In Spring 2024, the university tried to cut research time for junior colleagues, thus drastically overturning what university is. In October 2024, senior management began further ‘organisational change’ putting about 35 academics at risk — alongside the reduction of staff via the ‘mutually agreed resignation scheme’ already. In February 2025, they announced they would be closing their Telford site. Though management claims this won’t result in compulsory redundancies, not everyone can relocate.
91. **Worcester** opened the second round of its voluntary severance scheme in the late Summer of 2024, after an initial round earlier in the academic year. There has been some restructuring, and to date there has been one School merger. Staff are worried about course cuts and redundancies being on the horizon, and whilst these have not yet been announced, the VC has not ruled the option out. The university has not opened its reward scheme or promotion scheme since 2022 and currently there is a freeze on future staff appointments. The University is also in the planning stages of incorporating a wholly owned subsidiary company to employ future staff who will not be allowed access to the Teacher’s Pension Scheme (TPS) or Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), instead being forced to accept an inferior defined contribution scheme where employer contributions will reduce significantly. This will create an inequitable, two-tier workforce, and staff are concerned that there will be pressure for existing staff to be moved on to the inferior scheme.
92. The University of **York** had a Voluntary Severance Scheme for staff in Professional Services in 2023, and a wider voluntary severance scheme in April 2024. Management never articulated how many members of staff they wanted to leave. But in May 2024, they noted they’re looking to cut £34 million, which would amount to between 400-700 members of staff. In September 2024, the University Executive Board announced moving to compulsory redundancy of 30 academic posts. Their UCU Branch wrote this open letter indicating the lack of consultation. By December, they had managed to get the compulsory redundancies back off the table. But in February 2025, the VC announced looking for another £15 million in cuts, including through “additional savings in staff costs” with voluntary severance schemes “in specific areas” and flexible retirement.
93. The University of **York St John** announced they’re going to find £4-5m in savings this financial year, on the back of staff. This comes after multiple rounds of Voluntary Severance Schemes in previous years.
#### Redundancies mapped
The Notes from Below team has been pinning the redundancies on a map. Colouring in most of the UK at this point.
#### In recent years
1. The **University for the Creative Arts** closed their campus in Rochester and moved to colleges in Surrey. This move resulted in redundancies and programme closures. The building in Rochester is now possibly being turned into flats.
2. **Gloustershire** made people redundant in the summer of 2023, after cutting 100 posts in 2018.
3. **Leeds** **Conservatoire** cut heavily in its Music and Performing Arts School in 2023, getting rid of about a fifth of its full time academic staff.
4. **Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts** threatened compulsory redundancies in 2022; these became a voluntary severance scheme.
5. **Nottingham Trent** was under threat of restructuring and the resulting redundancies in the winter of 2024. At the end of February, the branch could announce that no compulsory redundancies would take place, but they lost valued colleagues through voluntary severance and early retirement, and some full-time roles were reduced to fractional appointments. The restructure of the School of Arts and Humanities led to job losses in April 2024. This wasn’t the first restructure, following one in Modern Languages in 2021.
6. **Salford**
7. There were multiple consultations at **Southampton** in 2017-18, with both voluntary severance and compulsory redundancies.
#### Reports, responses, and counter-arguments
* De Montfort University had a thorough response to the job cuts in 2022.
* Oxford Brookes drew up a financial analysis and a helpful overview of strategic demands.
* QMUL has no actual financial reason for the drastic slashing into staff resource, as we outline in this blogpost.
* Royal Holloway’s ucu in 2011 challenged the financial rationale in not one but two documents.
* Sussex breaking down the “Size & Shape” project.
* There is an extensive report on the local importance of Teesside, also digested in this twitter thread.
* York St Johns counted the beans and showed the financial narrative is faulty in 2024.
#### Where to start?
Here are five first steps for anyone new to university work, new to union organising, and for anyone who is feeling overwhelmed and unsure where to start.
1. Help amplify the questions asked about the financial justifications and feasibility of the cuts. You can find branches communicating publicly via this list.
2. Talk to your local branch officers and see if you can bring your expertise to bear on a campaign – analysing financial statements, developing communication, assessing equality impact. Find your branch here, and examples of branches countering their management’s accounting here.
3. Read and share stories about university workers who have successfully fought cuts, who have won better rights, who have improved their working conditions. University of London IWGB members fought for their right to be in-house and won; University of Liverpool UCU members blocked compulsory redundancies.
4. Talk with students, let them know what is happening, find out what they know. Students can encourage their local Student Union to ask questions about the consequences of the staff cuts and why no other solutions are discussed. (the cuts will hit students; see this thread)
5. Write to your MP and make sure they know the public is watching HE and is concerned about the lack of concern for a sector that is key to local communities and builds towards the future of the entire country. You can find your MP here.
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