Author: Philip Greenish, Chair of Council
Please note: information in this blog was accurate at the time of the meeting – 6 July 2021 – and may now have been superseded.
Council met on 6 July, again via Microsoft Teams. We had also met on 9 June for a session in awayday form dedicated to the University Strategy. We will consider the Strategy again at our September meeting and then in joint session with Senate on 1 October. We expect to approve it formally on 24 November.
Our July meeting started as usual with reports from the Vice-Chancellor and the new President of SUSU, Ben Dolbear. The Vice-Chancellor reported positive progress with student recruitment for 2021, albeit with a requirement for additional recruitment during clearing. He briefed us on the appointment of the new Vice-President (Operations) and on new guidance for the forthcoming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). He noted a further delay to the consultation on the Augar Review. Finally, he reported the excellent news of our rise in both the Complete University Guide and in the QS World Rankings league tables.
We welcomed Ben Dolbear to his first Council meeting since his election as SUSU President. He highlighted some significant issues from his written report including guidance issued to students on academic integrity, continuing work on modernising the curriculum, results of the recent student survey on mental health issues, a bid for funding to run the campus bus seven nights a week, a forthcoming focus on sexual consent and a request for the University support with this initiative. We also discussed the proposal to improve SUSU support for PGR Students. Finally, he noted the use of the student grant facility to support online learning which had been both well used over the past 18 months and supported by the University.
A major element on the July Council is business planning and we considered a series of reports by the Executive Director, Finance & Planning. Although business planning for 2021 onwards is complete, it predates the completion of the University Strategy so we anticipate the need for some change. It will, however, form a secure baseline for future planning. Council highlighted the need now to move at pace with the strategy and with our significant investment plans. We then approved the budget for 2021/22 and the Treasury Management Strategy and noted the work presented to us on scenario planning which looks, in particular, at potential downsides should some known risks come to pass.
We then discussed changes in the external environment and a wide range of strategic drivers which will influence the nature of our education offer, the evolution of our research and our enterprise, and the scale of our operations. We also discussed the importance of articulating our long-term ambitions (three to ten years). The urgent need to invest in our infrastructure needs to be informed by this longer-term thinking. We were pleased to see the ambition evident in the presentation.
In other matters, we noted the latest progress report on Bridging Strategy KPIs and the welcome improvement in the morale and wellbeing of academic staff. For students, this remains well below target which, although not surprising, is disappointing. We approved both the establishment of the new School of Healthcare Enterprise and Innovation, and the regulated fee proposal for domestic undergraduate students. From September, the conduct of Council meetings will change significantly with more responsibility delegated to sub committees. In anticipation of that, we took reports from the chairs of all the Council sub committees (Nominations, Finance, Pensions, Audit, Remuneration and Estates and Infrastructure). In the absence of its chair, we did not on this occasion consider the work of the Health and Safety Audit and Assurance Committee. As required by Office for Students (OfS), we took annual reports on the compliance of the Students Union with its code of practice and on compliance with the code of practise on freedom of speech.
Finally, we thanked outgoing members of Council – Mr Richard Cartwright and Professor Philippa Reed. We paid a special tribute to Dr David Price, the University Treasurer who leaves Council having served for over ten years, six of them as Treasurer.