Further to UCU’s meeting with Richard Middleton and Mark Spearing on 26 January to discuss our equality concerns about the impact of home working during this third lockdown, we have received the following response from the University.  We are pleased to note the commitment of management to address the valid concerns of our members.

“We recognise that some staff are in situations of real difficulty, in respect of their caring responsibilities in particular, which makes “attending” work problematic at some times of the day, on some days it can be difficult to attend work at all.  We also recognise that staff will want to  “be there” fully attentive for their children home-schooling, or for others for whom they are the carer.

We are working hard to find ways to communicate to all managers the University’s expectation that they will find ways to be flexible in their response to members of their team(s), whilst overall managing workload and delivery expectations and standards.

In 2020 during the first lock down we kept track of the use of the additional leave available for carers, and only 10% of the approximately 300 employees that used this form of leave used the full 10 days (or pro-rata) available to them. Generally the additional carers’ leave taken was well below that total.  We will on this occasion also monitor closely the use of this leave and respond accordingly, which could include reviewing and revising the total amount of additional carers’ leave available while schools are closed and parents are home-schooling, in particular.

We confirmed that if a person takes additional UNPAID leave then the saving from their salary not being paid is retained within the budget of their unit [i.e the most immediate organisational unit with devolved budgetary responsibility).  The key concern which can be clearly addressed is that the salary saving is NOT returned to a central University account.

We are committed to working with UCU, and have begun discussions, on our plans for ensuring that the impacts of Covid-19 are actively considered in all aspects of the promotion process, when it resumes, and in the years ahead”.

Richard Middleton

Chief Operating Officer