Welcome to the University and College Union at Canterbury Christ Church University. Please explore the tabs above to find out more about the Union, how to join and how we can help. You can contact us on ucu@canterbury.ac.uk.
Please note that this website is in the process of being updated. Please bear with us as we work to make improvements for you.
Vote of no Confidence Results
CCCU UCU wrote to the Vice Chancellor, the Senior Management Team, and the Clerk to the Board of Governors on Monday evening, following the closure of the Vote of no Confidence (VoNC) at 1700 on the same day.
The Canterbury Christ Church University vote of no confidence, organised by UCU, closed on Monday 31 March 2025 at 17:00.
Fully verified and unique votes with @canterbury.ac.uk email address: 375
Of whom:
Staff 282 (75%)
Student 90 (24%)
Other 3 (1%)
And of which:
No confidence: 359 (96%)
Yes confidence: 16 (4%)
The results indicate the lack of confidence staff and students have in the governance of the University and the decisions being taken at the current time. We hope SMT and the Board of Governors will use this information in their future decision making.
The results of the vote were reported on the UCU website at: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/13973/Canterbury-Christ-Church-University-staff-and-students-deliver-vote-of-no-confidence-in-vice-chancellor-senior-management-and-governors
Launch of a new Targeted Enhanced Early Exit Scheme (EEES)
Following repeated requests by UCU at JNCC (Joint Negotiation and Consultative Committee) and following the results of the VoNC, SMT have agreed to open a Targeted Enhanced Early Exit Scheme for colleagues in affected departments, regardless of risk status. The scheme launches on Monday 7th April 2025 and will close on Monday 28th April 2025. Further details can be found here: Targeted Enhanced Early Exit Scheme
UCU welcome this decision, although have fed back that the deadline is not long enough for staff to be confirmed at risk or not at risk, and that several months of unnecessary stress and anxiety could have been avoided had SMT taken this decision when UCU first requested it.
‘Ask the VC’ all-staff event
CCCU UCU are hosting an all-staff ‘Ask the VC’ event on Tuesday 8th April 2025 from 1130-1300 in VH.0.03 and hybrid on Teams. Members will have received an invitation to the event, which they are encouraged to pass on to non-members, and there is a StaffNET notice about the event here: All-staff ‘Ask the VC’ event StaffNET announcement
This Q&A event is a chance for staff to ask questions about the Transformational Change Programme (TCP) and the current financial status of the University, amongst other concerns you might wish to raise/ask about.
UCU will moderate the session but will not filter your questions – we want you to be able to ask the questions you really want to know the answers to.
Please do spread the word and attend in-person if you can (although this is a hybrid event).
In accordance with the second resolution of the amended motion presented at the December EGM (Motion EGM1224_01) and subsequently passed by members via digital vote, CCCU UCU have launched a vote of No Confidence in the Vice Chancellor (VC), Senior Management Team (SMT), and Board of Governors.
The vote was launched in the CCCU UCU Branch Meeting on Wednesday 12th March and will run until 1700 on Monday 31st March 2025. The vote is open to any staff or student at Canterbury Christ Church University and you will need to enter your CCCU email address to vote, and subsequently verify this email address once you receive a verification email for your vote to be counted. Non-verified, duplicate votes, and votes cast with a non-CCCU email will not be counted.
The vote is hosted by UCU via the national campaigns team so CCCU management will not see your email address or know whether or how you have voted.
To vote, please go to: https://yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/CCCU-VONC-vote
or scan the QR code here: 
There is some background information and then you will be asked:
Do you have confidence in Canterbury Christ Church University’s vice chancellor, senior management team and board of governors’ ability to effectively and responsibly oversee the current financial and strategic operations of Canterbury Christ Church University?
As a reminder, CCCU UCU is currently in dispute with CCCU over failure to rule out compulsory redundancies (CR) in this academic year, 2024-25, and next academic year 2025-26). CCCU has not ruled out CR, nor committed to launching an Enhanced Voluntary Redundancy scheme alongside the TCP consultations, despite repeated requests from CCCU UCU.
We received a response from the Remuneration Committee on 06/03/25. You can read the letter here, which states that the pay award decision was taken in October 2024 based on 2023/24 performance. The committee has decided not to revise its original decision to award SMT a pay increase.
The letter highlights areas of achievement for the University in 2023/24: partnership developments (we have argued that there is an over-reliance on these high-risk partnerships, there have been investigations into some of these partnerships leading to the ending of some contracts following teach-out, and the Office for Students is keeping a watchful eye on institutions with a high number of partnerships); and the growth in overseas students (which has evaporated this academic year).
As a reminder to members, the University announced in 2023-24 the need to make £10m savings, made colleagues in the Centre for Languages and Linguistics compulsory redundant, and approximately 60 staff were made redundant via an Enhance Voluntary Redundancy scheme. This is not acknowledged in the letter.
The letter does acknowledge that student recruitment numbers in 2024-25 were ‘disappointing, it was also acknowledged that work had now started on the reshaping and redesign of the University to help ensure financial sustainability’. There is NO MENTION of the need to make £20m savings and the 400+ JOB LOSSES in the letter. It should be noted that the decision of the Remuneration Committee, in October 2024, was taken AFTER the data on student recruitment was known, and after the Transformational Change Programme was launched.
The letter also states that ‘no member of SMT is granted a pay award unless their performance is rated as Excellent in the annual appraisal process’. UCU would not, therefore, expect any member of SMT to achieve this rating this academic year, given the poor student recruitment and retention, the poor financial planning that has led to the need to save £20m so urgently and by the end of July 2025, and the lack of any plan for an alternative to staff job cuts to make the bulk of these savings. The uncompassionate, delayed, and inaccessible communications of the proposals of the TCP and the inconsistences in each Strand’s approach (plus the different processes for some academic schools which have gone through redundancy consultation outside of the TCP), plus the refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies or to offer an Enhanced Voluntary Redundancy scheme alongside the TCP redundancy consultations, should also be factored into SMT performance analysis at appraisal.
CCCU UCU will consider how we can facilitate members to feedback to the Remuneration Committee on SMT performance this year so they can take this into account, and whether to respond further to the letter.
If you have views on the committee’s decision to go ahead with the second instalment of the pay award to SMT, or on how the branch should respond, please come to our next General Branch Meeting on Wednesday 12th March at 1230-1400 – look out for a reminder invite in your email inboxes soon!
In accordance with the fifth resolution of the amended motion presented at the December EGM (Motion EGM1224_01) and subsequently passed via digital vote, CCCU UCU wrote a letter to the CCCU Remuneration Committee, requesting they reconsider their decision to award the Vice Chancellor and members of the Senior Management Team a pay rise. This committee sets the pay of senior staff at the University who sit outside of the National Pay Framework. The letter, sent on 21/02/25, can be found here.
CCCU UCU asked for the decision to be reversed, or at the very least, given that the first instalment of £900 has already been paid, that the second instalment due on 1st March 2025 is not awarded to them.
All staff within the National Pay Framework are set to receive a pay award on 1st March 2025 to equate to a 2.5-5.7% increase due to the imposed pay award from UCEA, for most staff this is only a further £200-350 payment. CCCU UCU welcome the commitment of the Remuneration Committee to not award pay increases above the national pay award for senior leaders, however, the second instalment for the VC and SMT is likely to be several thousand pounds each, in comparison to the paltry award for most other staff. For example, the VC’s second pay increase instalment will be almost £6,500.
We will update members when we receive a response.
All CCCU UCU members should have received a template letter to send to their local MP, urging intervention in the higher education crisis and highlighting job losses and economic impacts at CCCU and Kent. The letter asks MPs to:
In accordance with the first resolution of the amended motion presented at the December EGM (Motion EGM1224_01) and subsequently passed via digital vote, CCCU UCU, via our Regional Office, wrote a Failure to Agree letter to the Vice Chancellor over “Failure to Rule out Compulsory Redundancies for both the current (2024/25), and next academic year (2025/26)” on 19/12/24. A deadline of 10/01/25 was given for the VC to provide assurances that there would be no compulsory redundancies, but unfortunately he failed to do so in his response to UCU on 06/01/25. CCCU UCU then issued formal declaration of dispute on 10/01/25.
UCU reserves its right to now progress this matter, but the institution is aware of the action needed to resolve this issue and we remain open to meaningful negotiations.
This dispute will continue until such time as all the above issues, and any issues related to any industrial action called for by the union in support of the dispute, have been resolved to UCU’s satisfaction.
In response, we are pleased to report that CCCU management have increased the frequency of the Joint Negotiation and Consultation Committee to fortnightly during January and February, and CCCU UCU welcome the opportunity for further discussion to resolve the dispute to the satisfaction of its members. In addition, at the first of these more frequent JNCC meetings on 16/01/25, CCCU UCU requested an extension to the deadline for the Enhanced Early Exit Scheme (EEES), and for the proposed redundancies in the School of Humanities and Education Studies (SHES) to be on an enhanced basis, rather than on statutory terms.
We will update members as soon as we have an SMT response to these requests.
UPDATE February 2025:
Dear CCCU UCU members,
Please see this important announcement from UCU Head Office on the national consultative ballot currently taking place – have your say by voting NOW!
The consultative ballot on the higher education pay and working conditions offer 2024/25 opened last week. You should have received an email containing your unique link to vote from Civica Election Services.
If you have not received the electronic ballot from Civica Election Services, you can now request a replacement via this link. Please note that you will need your unique UCU membership number. The replacement form will close on Wednesday 27 November 2024 (23:59).
If you have already received the electronic ballot, but have not yet voted, we encourage you to do so as soon as possible. You can also:
If you have already voted, then thank you very much for your participation and for supporting your union.
With best wishes
UCU head office
Members are encouraged to have a look at the following webpage and feedback on the proposed changes to assessment regulations that will come into force in September 2025: https://cccu.canterbury.ac.uk/quality-and-standards/assessment-regulations-project/assessment-regulations.aspx
The Narrated slides provide a brief overview and there are some areas the project team, led by Cathi Fredericks, want feedback on. You can feedback to quality@canterbury.ac.uk by Friday 22 November 2024.
There are some things that may impact on staff workload, so do take a look and ask questions/ provide feedback so they hear from as many staff as possible.
Please do engage, have a look at the proposed changes, and feedback to the Quality team. If you want to feedback anonymously, I am more than happy to collate members’ comments and contact Quality on behalf of UCU members – simply reply to the email sent to all members on this topic with your comments/ queries/ concerns by 1200 on Friday 22 November 2024.
Caroline
Branch Vice-Chair
Welcome to all our members as we go into the new academic year 2024-25, and especially to any new members joining us this month. Remember that you can contact us anytime on ucu@canterbury.ac.uk for advice and support on workplace issues.
We hope to develop this website over the course of this academic year to improve the information and resources we can share with members, and make it more functional. You may see messages such as “Please note that this website is in the process of being updated. Please bear with us as we work to make improvements for you” on various pages in the meantime.
We have updated the ‘Your Local Branch page’ with the new Executive Committee members for 2024-25, and will soon be adding a poster of the Exec so you can put a faces to the names.
Members will receive an invitation to the first General Branch Meeting, scheduled for a rearranged time of 1000-1130 on Thursday 19th September 2024, hybrid on Teams and in Lg41a on the Canterbury Campus. The agenda has been updated to focus on the Vice Chancellor’s recent all-staff announcement at: https://cccu.canterbury.ac.uk/notices/2024/Important-All-Staff-Briefing-%e2%80%93-Plans-for-202425.aspx and will precede his all-staff briefing, but will also include updates from the summer SCANDI redundancy consultation, a reminder of the new Executive Committee for 2024/25, and a discussion on the final offer for the pay and pay-related joint unions claim for 24-25 from UCEA (see attached UCEA offer and UCU National Negotiators Report), including the questions UCU want branches to answer at a forthcoming Branch Delegate Meeting on 24th September 2024.
We hope to see as many of you as possible at the first Branch Meeting, and good luck to all for the forthcoming academic year!
Hello Branch Members,
Our Annual General Meeting and elections will take place on 13 June 2024 at 1pm. Please see the attached guidance for how to apply to the executive positions, all of which are up for election. Our returning officer will be Zulfi Ali, and all nomination forms should be sent directly to him by email.
Nominations close on 10 May 2024, so please do put yours in soon!
UCU CCCU Annual General Meeting 2024amended (details)
UCU CCCU Annual General Meeting 2024amended Nomination form (nomination form)