Over recent months your reps have been in sustained negotiations with the University through the Joint Negotiating & Consultative Committee (JNCC) — the formal table where BUCU and management meet — as well as a series of additional meetings on specific issues. This update pulls together where we’ve got to across our March, June and July meetings, so members can see what we’re pushing for on your behalf and where the sticking points remain.

There’s a lot happening, and on several fronts we are not where we want to be. But we are at the table, we are raising your concerns directly, and we are holding the University to its legal and moral obligations. Here’s the picture:

Workload principles

Workload has been one of the most important pieces of work we’ve been involved in, and one where negotiation genuinely paid off. Your reps helped negotiate a set of Academic Workload Principles through a joint working group — a real example of the union and University working constructively together, and something we’re proud of. Having an agreed set of principles is far better than having none, and we want to be able to take a document to members that demonstrates positive, negotiated progress.

The frustration is what happened next. The principles were developed jointly and revised to Draft V1.5 following the task and finish group’s final meeting on 15 April 2026. That draft was circulated on the explicit basis, stated on its own face, that “JNCC will be asked to endorse these principles at the committee meeting on 25/06/26” — so Draft V1.5 is the agreed reference text. But when we compared it against the version the University subsequently uploaded — retitled “Academic Workload Principles” and marked RESTRICTED — we found a number of substantive changes that the working group never agreed. We cannot simply rubber-stamp a document that has been altered after the joint work finished. Consultation means members get proper time to review changes, so we’ve insisted the University provide a before-and-after version setting out exactly what has changed, and that the principles return to JNCC for proper consideration rather than being waved through. We will pursue the full set of unagreed changes through JNCC.

Two of those changes are a health and safety issue — and we’ve escalated them

Two of the deletions matter so much that we have formally raised them at the Joint Safety Advisory Committee (JSAC), because they bear directly on the University’s obligations under the Health and Safety Executive’s Notification of Contravention for work-related stress:
The Health and Wellbeing principle has been deleted. Draft V1.5 opened with a standalone principle requiring workload considerations to “prioritise and be underpinned by reasonable expectations of work-life balance.” In the final version that governing principle is gone — wellbeing now survives only as one consideration listed alongside “good management practice.”
The cap on excess workload has been deleted. Draft V1.5 stated: “There should be no protracted workload allocations that exceed a full workload.” That sentence has been removed, and the definition of a full workload as “1,000 points” has been softened to “normally 1,000 points” — quietly removing the ceiling on how much any one of us can be required to carry.

This is not a technicality. Workload is a primary stressor under the HSE Management Standards, and the University is currently operating under an HSE Notification of Contravention with an Action Plan due by 30 September 2026. The two provisions removed after the agreed draft are precisely the ones that made wellbeing a governing consideration in workload allocation and that placed a ceiling on individual workload. Deleting them is very difficult to reconcile with the remedial obligations the University is under, and in our view risks undermining the credibility of the Action Plan itself.

We have therefore asked JSAC to note this and to seek the reinstatement of both provisions — the Health and Wellbeing principle and the prohibition on protracted workload allocations exceeding a full workload — in the terms in which they appeared in Draft V1.5, in the text put to JNCC, by Wednesday 12 August. We have been clear that if they are not reinstated, the inconsistency between the amended principles and the Action Plan is a matter that would properly fall to be drawn to the attention of the HSE ahead of the 30 September deadline. We have copied our UCU Regional Official for the West Midlands into this submission.

That is where things stand: we support the principles, we want them agreed, but not on a “take it or leave it” basis, not without members having a real say, and not with the wellbeing and workload-ceiling protections stripped out after we had signed up to them.

Workload also connects to wider concerns members have raised — including in the Law School, where our workload survey pointed to significant overloading — and to how workloads will be managed after the reorganisation. We are keeping all of this firmly on the agenda.

The reorganisation and the Modern Languages / Translation & Interpreting consultation
The University-wide reorganisation — moving from five colleges to three faculties — remains the biggest issue on the table, and the most difficult.

Our position throughout has been simple: where the University is reorganising, restructuring or closing programmes, staff and their union have a right to meaningful consultation, to see the evidence behind decisions, and to be involved early rather than presented with faits accomplis. We provided management with a detailed set of points on how the union should be engaged during the reorganisation, and we have been pressing — repeatedly — for a proper response, for information on the cost of the reorganisation, and for a negotiated agreement setting out how we work together on it.

Translation & Interpreting / Modern Languages.

A key flashpoint has been the proposed closure of the Translation & Interpreting programme. Your reps raised a formal consultation case because we have serious concerns about the business case being put forward. Our concerns include:
the redundancy pool and whether it is properly justified, and the risk of discrimination in how it has been drawn;
the University’s refusal to share Equality Impact Assessments, on the grounds that small numbers could breach data-protection rules — which makes it very hard for us to test whether the pool is fair; the lack of support for staff at risk to build connections with other departments across the College of Social Sciences and the College of Arts and Law; the broader worry that short-term, local business cases are being made that will be damaging to the University in the long term — financially, strategically and reputationally.

We have been unable to obtain a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies through this process. We have, however, secured a commitment from the University to have Legal Services and the EDI Centre review the Equality Impact Assessment process and share the outcome and recommendations with us — an important step, because members deserve to know the redundancy pool has been drawn fairly and lawfully. We acted on this case because members asked us to, and we will continue to represent affected colleagues robustly.

Why we reject the “it’s only Translation & Interpreting” framing

Management has been at pains to insist that this is the ceasing of the Translation & Interpreting programme specifically, and not a restructure of the Department of Modern Languages. We do not accept that framing, and members should understand why it matters.

Translation and interpreting are not a detachable add-on to modern languages — they sit at the heart of modern languages study. Learning, teaching, researching and applying a language is inseparable from translating and interpreting it; that is how meaning moves between languages and cultures. You cannot remove translation and interpreting from a modern languages department and pretend the rest is untouched. The teaching is shared, the students are shared, the research culture is shared, and the pathways that make the wider degree attractive and viable are shared. Cut T&I and you hollow out the discipline and diminish the whole department’s offer — which affects colleagues well beyond those formally “in the pool.”

The distinction management draws is therefore a semantic and rhetorical one, not a substantive one. By defining a change as narrowly as possible — “just a programme,” not “the department” — the University shrinks the consultation pool, isolates the small number of staff directly named, and then uses that very smallness to withhold information from us (as we’ve seen with the refusal to share Equality Impact Assessments on data-protection grounds). Each cut, examined on its own, can be made to look modest and individually justified.

This is exactly the tactic a union exists to resist. We are a collective, and we look at collective issues. Our job is to see the pattern across the whole reorganisation — the cumulative effect on staff, on the equality profile of the workforce, on workloads, and on the strategic direction of the institution — not to accept a large restructure sliced into small pieces so that no single piece ever crosses the threshold at which the University must consult us properly or reckon with the whole. Compartmentalising significant change into a series of “isolated” programme decisions is how genuinely significant restructures get pushed through without collective scrutiny. We will keep insisting that these changes are looked at together, as the connected reorganisation they plainly are, and that the University meets its collective consultation obligations accordingly.

We’ve also flagged concerns about job description changes in External Relations, where the omission of AI-related duties has left members feeling more exposed, and we’ve asked to be involved in discussions on those changes.

PDR (Performance & Development Review)

We have reopened negotiations on PDR because we do not accept that the current arrangements are settled — and we want members to know that, despite what some may have heard, BUCU has not agreed the new PDR form.

Our core asks are that PDR should be a protected, developmental space that is kept separate from redundancy selection and promotion processes. Members have told us that being asked to refer to promotion criteria during PDR feels demoralising, particularly where promotion opportunities are stagnant. We’ve argued that PDR must not feed into redundancy selection, and we’ve pressed the University on data handling — including reports that PDR records might be uploaded to Core — and asked to see the Equality Impact Assessment, the stress risk assessment and any data protection impact assessment for the scheme.

The University has confirmed the interim review is optional, points to the Birmingham Academic Career Framework as an alternative reference point, and cites a staff-survey figure endorsing the new arrangements. We’ve challenged the response rate behind that figure and asked for a breakdown by staff group, because we expect the picture for academic staff to look rather different. We regard PDR as part of the recognition agreement, and the University has agreed to come back to us on the points we’ve raised. We’ve proposed a working group to agree PDR principles properly.

The Academic Development Programme (ADP)

With the first five-year ADP decision point approaching next year, your reps have been seeking reassurance for colleagues on the programme — particularly junior academics who have told us they feel under pressure, held to ambiguous or shifting expectations, and in some cases treated as though ADP were a “glorified five-year probation” or an “up or out” scheme.

We secured an important clarification: the University confirmed that ADP is not a probationary period, and that a colleague who has not met the criteria at the end point would go through the normal capability process rather than facing automatic dismissal. We’ve pushed for clearer communications to staff approaching the decision point, and we’ve requested data — broken down by ethnicity and gender where numbers allow — on how many participants have already gained promotion and how many might face alternative outcomes. We will not communicate specifics to members until we have the actual figures. We’ve also asked how ADP and promotions will work once the move to three faculties takes effect.

Study leave in the College of Social Sciences

We’ve challenged a change to the study leave system in CoSS, where a 5% FTE cap has been introduced. On our calculations, that could mean staff only get the opportunity for study leave roughly once every fourteen years. We regard this as a material change to academic terms and conditions introduced without proper consultation — and the timing is especially damaging with REF outputs due in 2028. The College defends the cap as ensuring fairness and consistency and points to its unfunded research allocation, but we’ve argued the cap is simply set too low, and we’ve asked for this to be looked at across the institution and benchmarked against other Russell Group universities.

Other things we’ve been working on

Teaching Fellow progression.

We’ve kept up the pressure on the lack of an automatic promotion pathway from Grade 7, and specifically raised the position of Grade 7 Teaching Fellows already doing Grade 8 work — including a potential equal-pay dimension. The University is developing a support package and a report, which we expect to be shared with us.

Fixed-term contracts and redundancy fairness.

We’ve raised continuing concerns that fixed-term contract regulations are not being properly followed for research and other staff, that consultation is sometimes triggered earlier than necessary, and about a glitch in the HR Portal that meant some staff weren’t notified of their appeal rights (now resolved). We’ve asked for data on how FTCs are used and how redundancies are managed, as part of our wider anti-casualisation work.

Health and safety.

We’ve pressed for up-to-date versions of the HSE action plan, noted that several deadlines had passed, and sought extensions to consultation time on health and safety policies. We’re also developing guidelines for safety representatives and securing assurances — given directly by the University — that no one will suffer any detriment for volunteering as a safety rep.

REF Code of Practice.

Your reps submitted detailed feedback on the draft Code of Practice, flagging in particular the treatment of research outputs for staff on fixed-term contracts and issues around DORA. We’re pursuing a “bridging document” to connect the Code to the University’s existing policies and processes.

Responsible investment.

When the University presented its updated Responsible Investment Policy, we raised concerns about the appointment of JP Morgan — a well-known financier of fossil fuels — to manage the investment portfolio, and about the reputational risk and the strength of the policy language.

Get involved

None of this work happens without members. The more colleagues tell us what’s happening on the ground — in your school, your team, your programme — the stronger our hand at the negotiating table. If you’re affected by the reorganisation, by a restructure or redundancy process, by workload, or by any of the issues above, please get in touch with your reps. And if you’re not yet a member, joining is the single most powerful thing you can do to strengthen our collective voice.

We’ll continue to keep you updated after each round of negotiations.