Senior managers spend almost £14,000 on attending awards dinner in Edinburgh

Aware that the University’s senior personnel attended the Times Higher Education Awards on 13 November in Edinburgh, we wrote to the Finance Director, Alastair Moffat, on 1 December seeking the full cost to the University of attendance at the event. Mr Moffat neither acknowledged our email nor replied to it, though he attended the dinner himself.

 

Instead, in response to two chasing emails, the then Deputy Vice Chancellor, Mairi Watson, who also attended the dinner, replied on 17 December stating she had “discussed this request with the UET [University Executive Team]” but “we will not calculate (and thus not provide) the full financial cost of participation and attendance at the event.” Subsequently, she wrote: “The matter is now closed from management’s perspective.”

 

On 18 December, we submitted a statutory request for the full attendance cost under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The University failed to reply within the 20-day legal limit, breaching the Act. But after two further chasing emails, the full cost of attending the dinner was finally provided, amounting to an astonishing figure of £13,905.63.

 

We have now requested an itemised breakdown. We know 20 participants attended, for the most part senior managers, as well as the ex-VC, Quintin McKellar, and the Chair of Governors, David Sproul. No lecturer attended, not even the winner of the VC Awards Teaching Staff Member of the Year. Two publicly available photographs of the University’s attendees at the dinner can be viewed here.

 

This astonishing expenditure needs also to be seen in the context of:

• the University’s refusal to reverse the unprecedented 50% parking charge rise, despite a petition gaining almost 1,100 signatories – see the report in the Welwyn & Hatfield Times;
• the University’s refusal to make a one-off hardship payment to UH3-UH7 staff as proposed by UCU and UNISON – though the University currently holds £104.5 million in cash and short-term deposits;
• the below inflation pay rise of 1.4% this year further contributing to the real-terms pay cut in our salaries since 2009 of 20-30% (depending on the measure of inflation used);
• the University’s decision to cut the staff bonus this year by 72% to £100 from last year’s £350; and
• the 42% rise last year in the number of senior managers earning £100,000 or more.

While senior managers spent almost £14,000 on just one dinner, both unions, UCU and UNISON, continue to receive reports of professional but also academic staff resorting to food banks, especially towards the end of the month.

 

We continue to press senior managers to discuss the parking and hardship payment issues with us constructively and flexibly so we can find a satisfactory way forward. We will doubtless discuss this further at our upcoming branch meeting on Wednesday 18 February at 1pm so please diarise and make sure to attend. Further details plus Zoom invitation to follow.

 

In solidarity

 

Dragan Plavsic

UHUCU President

On behalf of the UHUCU branch committee

 

From the latest Staff Survey: