Report of Discussion: 20 January 2026

Tuesday, 20 January 2026

A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Deputy Vice‑Chancellor Ms Loretta Minghella, CL, was presiding, with the Registrary’s deputy, the Senior Proctor, the Deputy Senior Proctor and eleven other persons present.

The following items were discussed:

Remarks on the Report of the Council, dated 17 December 2025, on changes to Statutes G II and G III concerning College contributions, the Colleges Fund and College accounts

(Reporter, 6808, 2025–26, p. 169).

Dr W. J. Astle (MRC Biostatistics Unit):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I did not sign this Report, solely because it proposes the demotion of parts of a Statute to the Special Ordinances. I am not aware that the Council plans to address the concerns I raised about the status of the Special Ordinances in the Discussion of 7 October last year, on the Report on the Herchel Smith Professorship of Biochemistry.1

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the fundamentals remain unchanged. Colleges admit undergraduate students and present them to the University for admission by matriculation. They arrange for them to be supervised term by term and when their students are successful in the relevant examinations and are ready to supplicate, their Colleges present them to the University, which duly grants their degrees.

This Report proposes further adjustments only to University–College financial relationships. As it notes, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1923 (at s.7) requires royal consent through the Privy Council to changes to the University’s Statutes and also to those of Colleges founded by royal charter. Though only some of Oxford University’s Statutes are ‘King-in-Council’1 all the Statutes of Cambridge require such Privy Council consent to make changes. In practice this is readily granted.

The present proposal is therefore constitutionally fundamental in character. It will lower to the status of Special Ordinance text currently in the Statutes, so as to permit the Regent House to make certain changes without the King’s permission. That is expected to lead to more adjustments because further proposals for substantive changes to the relationship of the University to its Colleges are to be made ‘separately, once the outcome on this Report’s recommendations is known’. Are these further changes to be Graced?

At this stage the opportunity is being taken to add a new paragraph to Statute A III 7 to meet the requirements of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act (1923) s.8 which requires that when the University makes a Statute: ‘prescribing or altering the scale or basis of assessment of contributions to be made by the colleges to University purposes, regard shall be had in the first place to the needs of the several colleges in themselves for educational and other collegiate purposes’. That section was amended by partial repeal in the Statute Law (Repeals) Act (1998), which removed reference to the role of the University Commissioners.

More than a quarter of a century later it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves of the role the Commissioners played in supervising the interaction of the University with its Colleges before the Act of 1923 at s.7 recognised the ‘power’ of both ‘Universities and colleges to alter statutes’ independently of ‘Commissioners’.

The husband of Queen Victoria, the actively interfering Prince Albert, was elected as Cambridge’s Chancellor in 1847. In 1850 a Royal Commission was launched and given the task of inquiring into the University of Cambridge. Prince Albert’s involvement was denied. On 13 June 1850 Lord Monteagle told the House of Lords that ‘his Royal Highness was entirely unaware of the intention of issuing this Commission until the declaration was made in the other House of Parliament’ and it appeared that the Chancellor of the University of Oxford ‘was equally unapprised of the intentions of Government’.2

There was some suspicion that this might imply criticism of the University. In the same debate Lord Brougham, claiming to speak with some authority from ‘his own position at the head of one of the colleges of this country, namely, the University College of London’, stressed that there was no ‘want of respect’, or ‘unkindly feeling towards the Universities’ in the establishment of this Commission. However he himself thought it ‘a very grievous mistake’. The parties engaged in seeking to effect ‘improvements’ included ‘the most able and intelligent men within the Universities’, so there had been expert advice. Nevertheless he saw a risk that the information gathered by the Commission might be ‘one-sided information’ because ‘those persons who were discontented with all that was done, and everything that was not done’ would be ‘coming forward to give their information’.2

Was there a need for a Royal Commission in any case, he asked? Taxpayers were not losing money. The Universities ‘contributed to the public much more than they received’:

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, he believed, extracted from the University of Cambridge 3,000l. or 4,000l. a year in the shape of stamp duty on degrees, and only conferred about 800l. a year towards the payment of certain professors.2

The Cambridge Colleges, Brougham suggested, certainly did not need a Commission to look into their affairs. The balance of power between the University and its Colleges lay with the Colleges. At the time the membership of two Colleges greatly outnumbered that of the rest, so that of the roughly 4,500 members of the Senate more than 1,500 were members of Trinity College, and nearly 900 of St John’s College. His own College, Trinity, had reformed its statutes between 1837 and 1844 ‘at the recommendation of the Crown’ and ‘with the consent of the Crown’. ‘The rival college, St John’s, had done the same’ with its new Statutes ‘confirmed by the Crown in 1849’. ‘The whole of the statutes of Pembroke College had been revised, and confirmed by the Crown in 1844, and the restrictions of fellowships to counties removed, as had also the statutes of Jesus College’.2

A further reason why a Commission was not needed, he pointed out, was that the University of Cambridge had already been busy reforming itself. It had responded to various ‘complaints’, especially that ‘the course of study was too confined to mathematical pursuits’. Yet ‘about the year 1822’ a ‘corresponding system of honours as connected with classical eminence’2 had been introduced and that was now coming into favour. A petition from the University’s graduates had persuaded that Commission to set itself a wide remit and it called for an expansion of the range of subjects. Natural Sciences and Moral Sciences were added and in due course history, political economy, moral philosophy, botany.3 This was an institution active in improving itself, though the Fellows of Colleges might differ considerably in the level of their academic activity.

This was to be a period of significant constitutional development for the University. Cambridge’s democratic governance had always been in the hands of its scholars, forming its ‘Senate’. Prince Albert thought a smaller body differently conceived from that provided by the College system would be better able to hold meetings and make decisions on behalf of the University. Oxford was meeting such a need with its new Hebdomadal Council, he suggested. He favoured the creation of a counterpart ‘Council’ for Cambridge in the form of a Caput Senatus, a body keeping an eye on academical considerations, rather than a mere power broker, whose would-be members might be vying to get the most friends to vote for them.

The Lord Chancellor introduced debate in the Lords on 24 April 1855 on ‘the form and constitution of the governing body of the University’ of Cambridge. ‘Making laws for itself’ was not the purpose of the University, he said, but nevertheless there should be ‘a body of persons appointed to promote the interest of the University including the interest of the public’, provided they sought the consent of the University’s members in the form of the Senate. The Commissioners ‘should from time to time be enabled to consider and give their sanction to measures’ to be ‘submitted to the Senate’ so that it could ‘make laws or graces’ as they which ‘from time to time the interest of the University might seem to require’.4

The University of Cambridge Act of 1856 asserted that it was ‘expedient, for the advancement of religion and learning’, and ‘the Extension of the said University’, to ‘enlarge the Powers of making and altering Statutes, Ordinances, and Regulations’ which the University had at the time, and also those of the Colleges, with their statutes giving them powers to make and change their own legislation.

The University of Cambridge Act of 1856 named Commissioners for the ‘purposes’ of that Act. Certain powers of these Commissioners set a precedent for those of the modern University Council. For example they were to be entitled to see documents including the accounts of the University and the Colleges. However the same Act limited democratic governance because it brought to an end the Caput Senatus. It was replaced by a Syndicate to consider how best to reform its own Statutes. This recommended that in future, all the Colleges should nominate the Proctors in turn, with a body constituted to consider the University’s own business. The Commissioners had been optimistic that that plan would be approved. But soon there was a petition finding fault with it, signed by forty-three members of the Senate.

Under the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1877 Commissioners continued to have a significant role in the constitutional reshaping of Cambridge including the relation of the University to the Colleges. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1877 s.3 created ‘two bodies of Commissioners’ one for each University, with powers to last until 1880 extendable for a year.

In 1923 Hansard records controversy on the appointment of new Commissioners under the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of that year. John Rawlinson, MP for Cambridge University, sought to ‘call attention to the unsatisfactory way in which members of this Commission have been selected’, even though the first list of names had been ‘contained in the Bill which was introduced by the Coalition Government’. His said constituents were complaining that ‘a very important section of University opinion’ was ‘absolutely unrepresented’, though there were ‘very strong views’ on ‘the question of the admission of women to full membership of Universities’.5 These proved to be the last of the Commissioners.

Under the Higher Education and Research Act of 2017 s.2, the supervision of the Commissioners which ended in 1923 has now been replaced by that of the Office for Students, which must respect the ‘guidance’ of the Secretary of State while acting as Regulator of English universities.6 The Office for Students has certain powers in relation to ensuring ‘quality’ of provision but principally with respect to the University. Its regulatory guidance on financial matters for the University is extensive7 but it does not include the Colleges individually on its Register. The role it leaves to the Colleges is chiefly to organise undergraduate supervisions on behalf of Faculties and Departments.

Financial considerations certainly intrude there, in a system where a College’s payment for the teaching of its students does not necessarily form part of a salary. That has been the subject of a certain amount of consideration about college contributions in recent years.8

Remarks on the Report of the Council, dated 17 December 2025, on the statutory exclusion of the Commissary’s jurisdiction in relation to staff disputes

(Reporter, 6808, 2025–26, p. 175).

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this Report adjusts the Ordinance on the Commissary’s powers so that they expressly comply with s. 46(1) of the Higher Education Act 2004 by also excluding employment matters from his jurisdiction under the University’s Statutes and Ordinances.

It also notes that ‘the current Commissary has confirmed that his office is subject to the exclusions relevant to Visitors’ as set out in this Act. The Privy Council’s current guidance on ‘petitioning’ a Visitor explains that ‘the Visitor no longer has any jurisdiction to consider complaints made by students or former students (or complaints made in respect of an application for admission)’. That need is now met through the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIAHE).1 Also excluded are complaints to a Visitor ‘from members of the academic staff in relation to an employment dispute’, for whom there is an avenue of recourse through an employment tribunal.2

The Commissary’s office is one of the most ancient in the University, created in the thirteenth century alongside that of the Proctors. The Regent House has been asked to clarify the role more than once in the last quarter of a century. On 19 January 2000 a first ‘Report of the Council on the Office of Commissary’, with a draft Statute attached, included a reminder that the Commissary’s ‘is by origin a judicial office’, with the Commissary originally presiding in a University court. It gave some history of the subsequent reshaping of the powers attaching to the office.

A ‘Second Report of the Council on the Office of Commissary’ appeared on 16 May 2001,3 with the first Report republished as an appendix. The Reporter of 6 June 2001 records the resulting Discussion, at which it was asked ‘whether the Commissary should consider complaints of unreasonable delay in University procedures affecting students’. That became unnecessary once an avenue of recourse for Cambridge’s ‘student’ disputes was provided when the Office of the Independent Adjudicator was created under the Higher Education Act of 2004.1 The OIAHE explains in some detail the grounds of ‘complaint’ it can consider.4

The Second Report on the Commissary addressed a constitutional question which had been raised in discussion of the first Report, when there had been a suggestion of ‘the establishment by Statute of a quasi-visitatorial jurisdiction in the University to be exercised by the Commissary’. That term is likely to need clarification if it is to be used for the Commissary because although the University has no Visitor many of the Colleges have Visitors of their own. In what respects may a Visitor’s role be so qualified as to become ‘quasi-visitatorial’?

Cambridge’s academic staff are variously employed by the University or a College or both. So when there is a dispute involving someone employed by a College as well as by the University a first question will be whether the matter falls to be resolved under a College’s procedures and must go first to its Visitor if it has one, or whether it is a University matter and therefore eligible for appeal to the Commissary. The Privy Council stresses that a Visitor ‘will not normally intervene unless it can be shown that the University has failed to observe its own rules or procedures; or that, although it has followed the proper procedures’, it has reached a decision which no reasonable body could make.2 That also applies where there is a College Visitor acting under the College’s procedures.

The Commissary is to create his own rules of procedure and has done so, binding the parties in any particular case and subject to the provisions of Statutes A I 13 and A IX 3–10 which limit the scope of the applications the Commissary will consider.5 The Commissary’s present jurisdiction is deemed to be ‘analogous to judicial review’, that is, concerned with ‘grounds of procedural irregularity’ rather than the substantial merits of a case. This may include clarifying the intention of the procedures to be reviewed. That has been tested. I made an application to the Commissary when the Reporter of 31 July 2024 announced ‘A New Fellowship Programme for Academic Leaders’, in the form of an appeal under Statute A IX 1(b) against the decision of the deputy appointed by the Vice‑Chancellor, to whom I had made a complaint under Statute A IX 1(a). As then Acting Commissary, Sir Patrick Elias began by considering the history and the grounds of the challenge. He considered whether any new employment relationship was created for a Fellow and determined that it was not, leaving him free to consider the matter without potentially touching on matters excluded from a Visitor’s jurisdiction. There was therefore no occasion for clarification of the definition of the Commissary as a quasi‑Visitor.

This Report is minimal. Perhaps the Council’s Notice in reply might explain its view of the Commissary’s role as that of a quasi-Visitor, subject of course to the Commissary’s approval of any definition proposed.

Remarks on the Annual Report of the Council for the academic year 2024–25

(Reporter, 6808, 2025–26, p. 176).

Dr S. J. Cowley (Faculty of Mathematics):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am Secretary of the Board of Scrutiny, but I speak in a personal capacity.

First, I’d like to apologise, because this speech is probably going to be rather Prescottian, given that my attention has been focused on the Board of Scrutiny meeting about the Vet School later this afternoon. Can I just say that I enjoyed reading the Annual Reports of the Council and the General Board this morning? I thought they were much better structured than in previous years.

But what did strike me was that they were really a list of ‘we have done this, we have done that’ and we might have learned a few lessons. But there’s really no commentary on what’s gone well and what has not gone so well.

I think the Reports might engage the Regent House better if there was more commentary. But maybe the Council and the General Board have decided to delegate that responsibility to the Board of Scrutiny? In which case, the Regent House may have to wait until the autumn. The reason why I say this is, if you read the section on the Change and Programme Management Board, one might have thought that things aren’t going too badly. But the impression I have is that things have been going not so well; I think we’re already about nine years into the Financial Transformation Programme, whilst the HR Transformation Programme has been put on hold. What did surprise me was that the Change and Programme Management Board only reports to the General Board. I think it might be worth giving some thought to whether the Change and Programme Management Board should be a joint committee of the Council and the General Board, as are the HR Committee and the Planning and Resources Committtee.

The other thing which struck me, and worried me somewhat, was under the section on governance, where the amendment to the Grace on the Academic Career Pathway for research staff was discussed. The Council observed that the General Board is responsible for the academic and educational policy of the University, and therefore whatever the outcome of the ballot, the General Board was allowed to disregard the amendment.

The reason this leaves me worried is if the General Board is responsible for academic and educational policy, what is going to happen if there is a vote on the Vet School? Is it going to be binding? Or can the General Board ignore the outcome of the vote? Because if so, I would find that of concern.

Dr J. K. Plummer Braeckman (Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Newnham College, and current Chair of the Board of Scrutiny):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I would like to make a short contribution in relation to the section within the Annual Report that deals with financial sustainability and the escalation in non-academic costs. Firstly, I would say that I agree with Stephen Cowley on the reports reporting what has been done procedurally rather than commenting on the outcome of these procedures. I think more could be done either to explain or to signpost the reader to more details elsewhere.

It is clear that, within the past few years, non-academic headcount and spend have increased significantly, whereas core academic activity has remained relatively unchanged. The report acknowledges the persistent core academic cash deficit and states that the University is looking to administrative transformation programmes and increased international fee income to restore balance.

It is important that the University is able to explain what this administrative expansion has delivered, what we might risk by reducing it, and what this might deliver in terms of savings. The report notes that numbers are being stabilised and headcount controls being put in place, and that there will be efficiencies generated as a result of the transformation programs, but at present, the picture is incomplete. What we are not yet given is a clear account of the baselines, the business cases, or the post-implementation benefit tracking through which such efficiencies can be demonstrated.

The concern is not only rising costs, but that academic activities become the adjustable part of a financial plan that remains unclear to the wider University – as the Vet School are discovering. The report notes that ‘The Council expressed the need for transparent reporting and the need for more robust communication of the savings to be delivered through ongoing transformation initiatives’. I therefore ask that the Council provide the expected net benefits and timescales of each major transformation programme, including savings realisation measures; and an outline of the resource allocation principles through which financial consolidation will be reconciled with the University’s academic mission.

The understanding of financial sustainability cannot be the preserve of a few: it must be openly discussed and well understood by every layer of the organisation.

Professor A. W. F. Edwards (Emeritus Professor of Biometry, and Gonville and Caius College), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the Council’s Annual Report to the University is a statutory requirement, ‘the University’ being the Regent House as Governing Body in accordance with customary usage. The Report under discussion includes a section headed ‘Election of the Chancellor’ which is a short account of the election of Lord Smith.

This Report includes the comment ‘Over the 2024–25 academic year, the Council approved the election arrangements’. This ignores the fact that in the previous year 2023–24 the Council had published a signed Notice dated 17 January 2024 giving a certain undertaking concerning these arrangements. This undertaking it subsequently broke by Notice dated 20 March 2025, replacing it with another similar undertaking.

Of this behaviour towards the Regent House we learn nothing in the current Annual Report. However, the first number of the Oxford Magazine in Trinity Term (our Easter Term) 2025 carried an article by me, ‘Electing a Chancellor the Cambridge way’, in which I gave a full account of the Council’s unsatisfactory actions and proposals ever since 2014 in this matter.

Furthermore, when commenting on the actual results of the recent election in the Oxford Magazine in the first number of the Michaelmas Term 2025, I was able to add an explanation, new to me, of how the introduction in 1952 of the Single Transferable Vote method for the election of the Chancellor was based on an error. The Council of the day had failed to recognize that the Ordinance they proposed for governing the use of STV in the University was qualified in the 1918 Act of Parliament for use only ‘when there are two or more members to be elected’. Thus the problem of STV when electing the Chancellor has been latent in our Ordinances for over seventy years.

Perhaps it is no longer the case that the Oxford Magazine is perused in the Old Schools or noticed by Council members. Rather than quoting from the articles at length in my present remarks, I am therefore sending copies of both to the Proctors so that members of the Council may be fully aware of the relevant history before the Council responds.

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, it is always good to see a Report of the Council or General Board beginning with the statement that that body ‘begs leave to report to the University’. A hierarchy of subordinate committees ‘report to the University’ through one of these bodies or as their ‘joint committees’. This forms a defined hierarchy intended to ensure accountability to the Regent House. However a well-known tendency is for a body ‘reported to’ to accept the findings of the body below with little query or amendment. That makes the publication of prompt, full and frank Minutes from those subordinate committees essential, but while the Minutes of the Council and General Board themselves may be read online they may be slow to arrive there. It can of course take time for Minutes to be approved but perhaps their ensuing online publication could then be speeded up?

The Council says it has supported the development of a more robust ‘headcount-based’ process as a means of seeing more clearly the savings looked for from the so‑called ‘transformation’ programmes, and is being updated on progress including ‘new governance processes’ and ‘requirements to hold posts vacant for fixed periods’. It would be helpful if the Council would publish – or encourage HR to publish – what is constitutionally or managerially involved in these respects.

There is a long history of published information about ‘risk’ which has been added to in the present Report with an assurance that there are regular ‘deep-dives’ into individual risks on a rotating basis providing an opportunity for risk owners and the Audit Committee to ‘discuss the management of risks in greater depth’. There has apparently been significant progress with that.

‘Optionality’ is a considerable strength of the University’s governance, because it makes for freedom of choice. Nevertheless there is a warning note on the ‘culture of optionality’ on which ‘further scrutiny during the 2025–26 academic year’ is called for. This is to include the Financial Transformation Programme ‘and the assurance framework supporting the wider transformation portfolio’.

Perhaps of most interest to veterans of the controversies over senior academic promotions a quarter of a century ago is the Council’s stated concern that there should be ‘transparent’, ‘streamlined and inclusive’ promotion processes which are not too open to ‘variation’. The needs to be met have changed though the provisions about University Officers in Statute C continue in force. The appointment of a range of new categories of ‘academic’ and ‘research’ staff has added much additional complexity to the task of evaluating these ‘staff’ for purposes of promotion. When the Judge Business School sought to introduce a Doctorate of Business (Bus.D.) it was argued that ‘supervisors’ at the Business School including non-academic supervisors would ‘have an intrinsic research motivation to engage intensively with their Bus.D. supervisees’ because they would ‘give them direct access to organizations at the most senior level, which will benefit their own understanding and research’.1 But would these ‘supervisors’ necessarily be the University’s own employees and, if they were, would they find themselves in a category offering the opportunities for promotion available to its UTOs? Might some tidying up of categories and ‘offices’ be advisable?

Not for the first time, the increasing regularity of mentions of ‘senior management’ or ‘leadership’ also calls for comment. This category remains unknown to the Statutes and Ordinances but has apparently already led to problems in awarding such titles. The Council names a lack of ‘diversity’ and ‘representation’ among them. When new ‘Fellowships’ for University ‘leaders’ were announced in July 20242 it had to be clarified that these were titular not substantive; yet substantive responsibilities were found to attach to them.

This Report lists ‘changes in the University’s senior leadership’, including the creation of new ‘titles’ for existing offices. Statute C III 15–17 does not identify a ‘Senior’ category of Office-holders, such as the Pro‑Vice‑Chancellors. Nevertheless ‘Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Environmental Sustainability) and Professor Kamal Munir, Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor (University Community and Engagement)’ have been ‘jointly awarded the title of Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor by the Vice-Chancellor, with effect from 1 January 2025’. These are ‘titles’ not new Offices but is the difference clear? Again, is some tidying up needed before such proliferations of types of post expand further?

The appointment to the office of Pro-Vice-Chancellor requires Council approval and the Council sets a fixed period for an individual to hold that office. Thus ‘in April, on the recommendation of the Nominating Committee for the Office of Pro-Vice-Chancellor, the Council approved the reappointment of Professor Bhaskar Vira to the office of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Environmental Sustainability) for a second term of three years from 1 October 2025’. The Council has approved various appointments to the ‘headships’ of Schools and Chief Information Officer and Director of University Information Services (UIS), and the continuation ‘in their existing roles’ of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Interim Director of Finance (with the result that ‘the merger of the offices of CFO and Director of Finance has been postponed until further notice’). Where may the grant of any ‘title’ of ‘Senior’ fit with these definitions?

Remarks on the Annual Report of the General Board to the Council for the academic year 2024–25

(Reporter, 6808, 2025–26, p. 183).

Dr W. J. Astle (MRC Biostatistics Unit):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am a member of the Council, but I am not speaking on its behalf. I am also the Membership Secretary of the Cambridge branch of the University and College Union, but these remarks have not been formally approved by the branch; they represent my own views.

I would like to address an employment responsibility of the General Board.

The Clinical School section of the Human Resources Division (HR) has recently indicated that several academics working in the University’s Medical Research Council (MRC) Units are to be removed from their University offices when the quinquennial MRC funding associated with their respective Units expires, even if alternative funds have been secured to underwrite their ongoing employment. The expiry of quinquennial funding is due to occur first for the MRC Epidemiology Unit, at the end of March.

The staff affected are University teaching officers holding so-called ‘co-terminous’ employment contracts. These contracts ostensibly link the continuity of employment in a University office with the availability of a particular source of supporting funds, through the use of a clause that purports to terminate the employment ‘on the occurrence of a particular event’ that is chosen to be effectively equivalent to the expiry of the funds. Such clauses, if valid, would make the contracts fixed‑term, thus, it is claimed, avoiding the need to use one of the procedures in the Schedule to Statute C to dismiss the officers concerned.

The University’s use of fixed-term contracts in this context is apparently at odds with its own HR policy, which was written to ensure adherence to employment law.1 Many of the staff at risk have been promoted into academic posts following long periods of continuous service leading and supervising research in the University and thus are likely to have been issued with successive contracts of employment and to have been employed by the University for a period of four years or more. In such circumstances, Regulation 8 of the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 makes an employment permanent, unless any fixed‑term provision of the contract is ‘justified on objective grounds’.2 Limited funding is specifically excluded as a sufficient objective justification where ‘the work is ongoing in nature’.3 Moreover, Regulation 3 of the 2002 Regulations provides that ‘a fixed-term employee has the right not to be treated by his employer less favourably than the employer treats a comparable permanent employee … by being subjected to any … detriment by any act … of his employer’.4 Removal from University office surely constitutes a detriment.

HR have suggested that, at least in some cases, the academics removed from their University offices might be offered unestablished research posts as alternatives. This appears to constitute a form of dismissal and re‑engagement. Perhaps the Notice in response might explain how it can be consistent with the July 2024 Code of Practice on dismissal and re-engagement issued by the Secretary of State under section 203 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992?5

The risk that unestablished research posts would be advanced as alternatives to the statutory academic offices was an obvious consequence of the introduction of academic titles for research posts, warned of in a non‑placet fly‑sheet.6 But unestablished research posts are not equivalent to academic offices. They have no constitutional status. Nor are the employment terms for permanent unestablished research posts equivalent to those of academic posts in other UK universities besides Oxford, as HR have claimed. As the Council has explained, a research post is not a form of unestablished academic post; it is not an academic post at all, despite the disingenuous new nomenclature.7

Is there a lawful precedent for the forcible removal of an academic from a University teaching office, except through the use of one of the procedures in the Schedule to Statute C? As several contributors to the Discussion in July 2024 pointed out, the MRC Units are academically successful.8 The withdrawal of quinquennial funding, which forms only one of the multiple income streams they generate for the University, is a consequence of an administrative rather than an academic decision of the MRC. Withdrawal of funding does not in itself constitute a lawful ground for redundancy, for a change in role, or for dismissal and re-engagement on inferior terms and conditions of employment.

Presumably, a Professor or Clinical Professor who is removed from his or her University office while holding a Professorial Fellowship of a College will lose his or her College office too. Have the Colleges been consulted? Did they consent, as Statute A III 7 requires, to the alteration to Special Ordinance C (vii) A 6 that was made in 2018 to enable the introduction of co-terminous Professorships?9

In response to previous remarks of mine about co‑terminous appointments, the Council explained that:

The University’s main safeguard against the risks [to academic freedom] identified by Dr Astle is the fact that the competent authority, and not the external funder, makes the decision about whether or not to terminate the Professorship on the happening of the event. The competent authority can therefore consider whether it wishes to continue to support the Professorship from alternative available funding. The General Board has asked the Heads of the Schools to remain mindful of these risks.10

The competent authority in the case of academic offices is the General Board. Did the General Board make the decision to terminate the employment of the academics holding co-terminous contracts in the MRC Units? If so, when, why and on what lawful grounds?

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the General Board reports to the Council, while heading a hierarchy of its own subordinate committees, many with their own subordinate committees. For example, the General Board’s Education Committee (GBEC) carries ‘operational responsibility for education, teaching, quality assurance and standards, and other student-related matters’, subject to decision-making on particulars by other bodies which are its sub-committees. Thus ‘new courses and significant course amendments’ were approved by the Academic Standards and Enhancement Committee (ASEC) or the Postgraduate Committee (PC), as listed in this Report. A new Ordinance covering Assessment Formats came into effect from Michaelmas Term, listing five aspects all requiring their own expertise: (a) Coursework; (b) In-person handwritten examinations; (c) In-person invigilated digital examinations; (d) Digital non-invigilated open-book examinations; and (e) Presentations.1

In an attempt to take a broader view of its many activities the Board has approved an Education Vision statement to supplement the University’s account of its ‘Mission and Core Values’. But that too descends down a hierarchy of responsibilities. The Board’s own Education Committee has a Vision of its own, with two strategic priorities, ‘identified’ by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability. These it recommends to the General Board.

These arrangements are a reminder of the decentralisation of the University which complements the ‘optionality’ mentioned in the Council’s Report.

One decision of the General Board has prompted concern about the operation of the University’s relations with PSRBs. The future of the Veterinary Science Tripos is to be reconsidered by the General Board. Perhaps a reminder of the Board’s previous statement may be helpful:

The Board considered the initial findings of the Veterinary School Review Group in October, which had been commissioned to establish a sustainable way forward for the School. In November, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) changed the registration status of the Department of Veterinary Medicine from ‘full’ to ‘conditional’, and the Board received regular updates on work being undertaken in relation to each of these matters during 2025–26. Measures were put in place to support the Department and the Veterinary School under the oversight of the School of the Biological Sciences, and in March the Board approved the continuation of recruitment to the Veterinary Sciences Tripos in 2026. The Board will receive further updates during 2025–26.

But when?