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President's weekly update

11 November 2021

UCU Ballots
The results of two UCU ballots were released. In the ballot on changes to USS pension, the turnout of our eligible UCU members voting narrowly missed (49.95%) the legal 50% threshold required to give a mandate for action. 78% (807 staff) of those voting were in favour of industrial action. We have about 6,300 USS members. In the vote on pay and employment conditions, the turnout was 50.4%, so exceeding the threshold.  74% (721 staff) of those voting in this ballot were in favour of industrial action. Pay and pensions are negotiated nationally, and pay awards affect all of our staff, which number over 12,000. We are awaiting further information of UCU actions which will be discussed by their higher education committee on 12 November. Industrial action would be deeply regrettable and would risk causing significant disruption to our community. We will prioritise actions to protect the interests of our students, not least after the severe difficulties they have suffered over the past almost 20 months.

University finance
We are almost at the end of the external audit of our financial accounts for last year and these will be reported publicly. The accounts, related documents and the report from the auditors were reviewed and approved at meetings of our Board Finance and Audit and Risk Committee. We noted that the audit has raised very few issues and the discussion focussed largely on the fact that this has been an exceptional year. There were many variations in income and expenditure versus the budget, but overall the financial outturn was significantly better than budgeted. This is not as high as we, or the Board consider necessary since it is that cash that allows us to continue to invest in critical infrastructure and our core activities.

Regional engagement
Professor Andy Westwood, Vice-Dean for Social Responsibility in the Faculty of Humanities, and I met Alun Francis, Principal of Oldham College and Deputy Chair of the Social Mobility Commission. We have already held discussions with Alun as part of our work with the nine regional FE colleges and talked about the current review of the economic future for Oldham, and how we might work more closely with the College.

At a meeting of the Oxford Road Corridor Board, which I chaired, we signed off its audited accounts and discussed the very successful recent Corridor of Light event. This was the last meeting for Sir Richard Leese who will be retiring soon as leader of Manchester City Council.

Internal meetings
We held the Annual Performance Review (APR) for Professional Services (PS). We recognised the major efforts of PS staff, particularly during the pandemic. The discussion focussed on agility, joining up systems and processes to reduce workloads and improve efficiencies and staff wellbeing.

At Planning and Resources Committee, we reviewed activities and successes over the past year for Manchester University Press (MUP) and Environmental Sustainability. Both had achieved a great deal in a very challenging year and were commended for their performance. Achieving our net zero targets remain challenging and will require very significant investment as well as changes in behaviours.

You can watch the most recent open staff meeting with SLT. We introduced Professor Richard Jones, Vice-President for regional innovation and civic engagement and Adèle MacKinlay, Director of People and Organisational Development. We answered questions on the progress with our pilot on hybrid working, and on access to car parking places where there is always more demand than available spaces, though this may be slightly eased by hybrid working.

One member of staff asked what we were most proud of over the past year. This was a great question because, while we spend a lot of time discussing what has not gone as well as we would have hoped for and how we improved, for example in the APRs, I had only recently asked my senior colleagues what they had felt most proud of in that timeframe. The answers included: how staff have pulled together and worked so hard to adapt to COVID, delivering on most of our activities and the many who have worked on the front line to respond to COVID; the resilience and commitment of our students; gaining almost £2m in donor support for students, and providing further support for our PGRs; increasing communications to staff and students; appointing a new lead for equality, diversity and inclusion which is now a new independent directorate; coming top in the world in the Times Higher Education SDG league table; winning the greatest share of UKRI funding; opening MECD and the Royce hub; signing partners for Innovation District Manchester; our Innovation Factory delivering more spin-out companies than in any other year; and setting up the investment company Northern Gritstone.

There are likely more and we would welcome hearing what you have been most proud of. We are also still welcoming ideas on how to reduce workload- deadline 12 November.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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