Reports

Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on exchanges of Professorships

The Council and the General Board beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. This Report proposes a change to Special Ordinance to enable the General Board to approve proposals for the exchange of one Professorship for another. Since publication of a separate Report proposing a one-time exception to enable such an exchange, there is now evidence that this scenario is uncommon but likely to occur again and therefore a permanent change to the Special Ordinance is proposed.

2. In the past, the General Board has appointed a Board of Electors to consider the election of the holder of an existing Professorship to another Professorship. However, this level of process seems disproportionate when all parties concerned, including the School, will need to have endorsed the transfer to the vacant Professorship for it to be contemplated. There should be an overt but separate process for elections that do not follow the standard recruitment process.

3. If the Regent House approves this Report’s recommendation, the General Board will consider each new proposal for such an election on its merits and determine the steps it wishes to take to ascertain whether the individual concerned has sufficient standing in the field of the vacant Professorship. The Board will remain mindful of the need to maintain high standards of academic excellence in elections to all Professorships whilst recognising that a light-touch process may be appropriate.

4. The Council and the General Board recommend that the following new sub-paragraph (v) be inserted at the end of Section 1(c) of Part B of Special Ordinance C (vii) (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 82):

(v)any vacant Professorship to which the General Board agrees to elect the holder of another Professorship, the election to the vacant Professorship to take effect from the date of resignation from the other Professorship;

19 November 2025

19 November 2025

Note of Dissent

We cannot support a proposal that would allow the General Board to elect its favoured candidates into some of the world’s most prestigious Professorships without so much as an explanatory Notice to the University. If transfers between Professorships are to be allowed they should be approved by Grace of the Regent House following the publication of a Report.

19 November 2025

Report of the Council on removal of the membership of the University Centre

The Council begs leave to report to the University as follows:

1. In this Report the Council proposes the rescission of the Ordinance for the University Centre. The building would remain a part of the University estate, and remain subject to the normal procedures governing University sites and buildings, but there would no longer be a membership associated with the building. The University Centre requires a comprehensive refurbishment, which is unlikely to be affordable for ten to fifteen years and therefore it is unlikely to be able to serve as an amenity space for use by members for at least that period.

2. The University Centre was built in the late 1960s to provide recreational and meeting space and catering facilities for those within the University community who did not have access to College amenities.1 The Report of the Syndicate on the Relationship between the University and the Colleges noted that there was ‘no single focus for the life of the University as distinct from its Colleges’ and that those University staff who were not Fellows of Colleges, and postgraduate research students, ought to have access to ‘rooms for meetings and conferences, for occasions when the University gives hospitality, and for other needs’.2 The Ordinance for the University Centre reflects those expectations, by entitling members of the Regent House, University officers and Fellows of Colleges, and postgraduate registered students to be members of the University Centre.

3. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the University Centre provided several loss-making (and therefore subsidised) food services. These are now closed, as is the ground floor bar which immediately before the pandemic was operated by a local wine bar. The University Centre, along with other buildings across the estate, was closed during the pandemic. This coincided with plans to undertake some internal refurbishment to provide more teaching space and operational accommodation within the building, and to relocate the University’s central catering kitchen from the University Centre to the West Hub on the West Cambridge site. The West Hub provides recreational and meeting space and catering facilities equivalent to those previously provided in the University Centre, albeit not in the historic city centre. Building works undertaken in 2023, including replacing the roof coverings, have enabled the continued productive use of the University Centre pending agreement of its future long-term use.

4. Notwithstanding these and other, discrete interventions that have been made over time, the building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems, which are beyond end of life, will need to be replaced if the building is to continue in long-term operational use. In addition, the building fabric will need to be assessed, in particular the listed external cladding and fenestration. A major refurbishment of the building would be expected to replace the current gas-fired boilers with low or zero carbon energy solutions, and any alternative arrangements for space and water heating would require thermal performance upgrades to the building fabric. The cost of replacing fossil fuel energy sources to meet the University’s zero carbon commitment will be significant. Current figures suggest that those costs will exceed the existing allowance for capital expenditure.

5. A feasibility study was conducted in 2024 to evaluate options for future use of the University Centre, and this included a consultation process which sought the views of those entitled to membership of the University Centre about its future. The consultation covered four options for a refurbished University Centre: a multi-use (students and staff) hub analogous to the West Hub; an education hub for teaching and examinations, similar to the Sidgwick site lecture block; a mixed workplace for University and commercial uses; and a fully commercial use (sale or lease to a third party). 80% of respondents indicated a preference for the first option; there was little enthusiasm for third party commercial use.

6. The Strategic Estate Framework takes seriously the expectation that a reshaped University estate will include sufficient and appropriate amenities for students and staff. The Framework and the consultation process that underpinned it indicate, however, that the University Centre building is not well suited to meet that expectation. The vision for the University estate as set out in the Strategic Estate Framework is to develop facilities that better connect people across the University estate, within the principal University sites and buildings. The Strategic Estate Framework proposes to develop, over time, in the region of ten ‘themed forums’ across the University. These will be open to all University members and will provide collaborative spaces, a café, private working and meeting rooms as well as labs or workshops that will enable collaboration within and across Schools, analogous for example to Pavilion A in the Centre of Mathematical Sciences, where students, staff and visitors meet both for work and to socialise.

7. The top floor of the building is assigned to the Cambridge Students’ Union, and other areas are used for University teaching and examinations; both uses helped to facilitate the sale of the Mill Lane (South) site to Pembroke College by replacing the former Cambridge SU offices in 17 Mill Lane and (in part) the former Mill Lane lecture rooms. Some back-office areas are used by the University Messenger Service and other facilities management functions of the Estates Division. The closure and disposal to King’s College of the University buildings on the north side of the Mill Lane has, however, created opportunities to make further, productive interim use of space in the University Centre during the period until a comprehensive refurbishment is affordable and a substantive long-term use agreed.3

•The former bar area on the ground floor will be assigned to the Newcomers and Visiting Scholars organisation,4 which has been a regular user of the facilities in the University Centre for many years.

•Part of the former central catering kitchen on the first floor will be repurposed as an Occupational Health hub, providing services to students that will complement staff-facing Occupational Health services (the latter will be relocated from 16 Mill Lane to Bene’t Place, to co-locate with Staff Counselling).

•The area formerly used exclusively by the Gates Cambridge Trust scholars (until their own move to 17 Mill Lane in 2023) will be assigned to IdeaSpace,5 to replace its current accommodation in Laundress Lane.

8. Given the requirement for a comprehensive refurbishment of the building in due course, none of the changes is intended to be permanent nor do they require substantial alterations; a Grace seeking Regent House approval for these proposals under Statute F II 3 is therefore not required. The Ordinance for the University Centre does not stipulate how the building is to be used, therefore it is not necessary to remove the Ordinance to enable these temporary uses. However, in light of the withdrawal of many of the services previously provided by the University Centre, the Council has agreed that it would now be appropriate to seek Regent House approval to remove the Ordinance for the University Centre.6

9. If this Report’s recommendation is approved, the Council has agreed:

•to consult with the University and Staff Joint Board on the wording of class (j) in the Schedule of Classes of Persons Excluded from the Status of University Assistant (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 152); and

•to remove a reference to the University Centre in paragraph 6.1 of the Sites and Buildings Regulations (reproduced in Statutes and Ordinances, p. 1069) by revising the relevant bullet to read ‘operating catering outlets around the University’.

10. The Council recommends that the Ordinance for the University Centre (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 671) be rescinded.

19 November 2025