Email to students 28 January 2022

Dear students,

The national University and College Union (UCU) has announced that a further round of industrial action will take place in universities across the UK in the form of 10 days of action accompanied by continuous action short of a strike.

Strike dates announced are as follows:

• Week 1: Monday 14 to Friday 18 February 2022 (5 days)
• Week 2: Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 February 2022 (2 days)
• Week 3: Monday 28 February, Tuesday 1 March and Wednesday 2 March (3 days)

Alongside this:

• The action short of a strike will continue and will finish no later than 3 May 2022.
• The action short of a strike is staff working their contracted hours and duties and not volunteering to do more.

It is incredibly disappointing that further industrial action has been announced. Making sure we have the right support and procedures in place to minimise the impact on you continues to be my priority. For this we have a contingency group in place led by Tracy Lightfoot the PVC for Learning, Teaching and Students which will be meeting daily throughout the period of industrial action.

At present we do not know what the scale of the take-up for action will be. Staff are not required to tell us in advance if they plan to take part, so it is difficult to assess the potential scale and impact; as before some students may feel more impact, but others may feel little or none at all.

I shall write to you again nearer the start of the planned strike days, and we will be updating the student pages on the Industrial Action web pages. For those students who have joined us this month, this site also provides some background information about what this action is and why this is happening.

Let me say again that I regret very much that the UCU has called for more industrial action. As a community we have been through so much together over the past months and years, and I hope we can continue to offer support and treat each other with compassion and respect in the coming weeks.

Best wishes,

Charlie Jeffery

Vice-Chancellor