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President's weekly update

18 November 2022

Further support for students

After discussions between key staff in Teaching, Learning and Students and our Students’ Union, we are providing every registered student studying on-campus (over 40,000) with £170 each or £85 for those studying part-time as part of our ongoing support for them as they face cost of living pressures. This financial support will be available before Christmas. Early next year we will consider further support to those students with greatest need. We are continuing with our cost of living fund which is available for all students and a range of other support programmes.

Chancellor’s Autumn Statement

As expected, the Chancellor announced effective increases in taxation which will inevitably affect our staff, and acknowledged that the UK is now in recession. Full details of departmental budget cuts have not yet been released, but the Chancellor committed to maintain research and development spending and to increase this to £20bn by 2024-25, though inevitably this will be eroded by inflation. He also said that High Speed 2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail would go ahead and described investment zones which will be linked to universities.

Regional issues

At one of our regular meetings of the four vice-chancellors from Greater Manchester, we talked about the impact of inflation on our staff and students, and on all costs within our universities, forthcoming strikes, and the national crisis in rented accommodation which is impacting on our students and staff. We discussed the success to date of our Civic Universities Agreement which has just celebrated its first year and several of the universities, including ours, took part in a citizens’ panel to ask local neighbours what they want and expect of their universities.

I attended the launch of the branch of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (Centre for Process Innovation) in Manchester in Circle Square. The event was very well attended, including many from the University and we discussed new areas of collaboration including health-tech and digital health in addition to our strong partnerships in materials research and innovation.

Research and innovation

Greater Manchester has now submitted bids as one of three national innovation accelerators, in which our staff played major roles. We should hear the outcome early next year. Since the increase in the budget for Innovate UK, which will fund these, has been retained, we assume that they will go ahead.

I chaired a Russell Group discussion with Dr Ilan Gur, Chief Executive Officer of ARIA, the new Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Ilan has been a very successful investor and entrepreneur and discussed his thinking for ARIA, which is not quite yet officially established. The original idea was based on the US funding agency DARPA - ARIA will pick up some aspects of DARPA but will also be quite different.

Accountability and planning

We have now completed the annual performance reviews for the three Faculties and Professional Services with robust discussion and many actions and ideas. Student satisfaction and staff wellbeing featured most strongly. We are now preparing for our Board of Governors Accountability conference next week at which Board members discuss progress and challenges with all of the Senior Leadership Team.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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