Colleagues,
In this Bulletin:
Open Member Meeting Reminder
L-SL Progression
Recording of Teaching
NEC Ballot
TPS Service Errors
Lecturers Doing CL Role
Open Member Meeting Reminder
The third Open Member Meeting of the academic year will take place on Wednesday, 4 March, at 1.00-2.00pm. This will be a hybrid meeting, either on campus in Eden Building ER105 or on Teams at the link in your email reminder.
These are informal, no-agenda meetings for members to bring any concerns or ideas to the Branch Committee. Come and tell us what is happening in your schools/services.
L-SL Progression
We are close to completing negotiations on a potential compromise resolution to the suspension of L–SL Progression. By the start of March, we hope to send out information about it, survey all members about their views on it, and schedule a Q&A session about it, which Management have already confirmed members will have the right to attend. The subsequent steps for UCU will be informed by the results of the survey. If the members affected by it are overwhelmingly in favour of accepting the compromise, then it could be implemented very rapidly. The issue of (the lack of) progression for Research Fellows is outside the scope of these negotiations, but is under negotiation separately.
Recording of Teaching
As explained at the October BGM and in previous bulletins, at the start of this academic year Management attempted to introduce a new Recording of Teaching policy that had not been negotiated with UCU and that they knew would be incompatible with UCU’s stated principles on the matter. In response, UCU declared a Collective Dispute, but then suspended this dispute when Management agreed to negotiate the policy with UCU and agreed that nobody will be compelled to comply with the policy that is under dispute. This remains the current situation. UCU are currently not calling for a boycott of Recording of Teaching; so if you are happy to comply with the policy then do so; but if you’re not happy to comply with the policy then don’t, and call on UCU support if you need it.
NEC Ballot
You should all by now have received your ballot papers for the current round of elections to the National Executive Committee. These elections are extremely important to the future of the union, but turnouts are often small and every vote is crucial. So please use your vote! Members often ask the Branch Committee if we can suggest which candidates to vote for, and this year we recommend members vote for the UCU Commons slate that you can see here: Who should I vote for?
TPS Service Errors
Thank you to the eagle-eyed members in Maths & Physics who alerted us to a widespread problem with TPS records showing a “break in service” for June 2025 when no such break had occurred. We queried this with payroll and were told that there had been a corrupt data file, and that they were correcting errors as fast as possible when notified of them. So please all do check your Service History information on the TPS website https://www.teacherspensions.co.uk/public/login and email PayrollandPensions@lancashire.ac.uk if it is incorrect.
On a related matter, you may have noticed that your January salary appears on your bank statement as having come from “MM Salary Payroll”, which is obviously misleading and might suggest we have a different employer. We queried this with payroll too and they said it was also an error, and that future statements will read “University of Lancashire”.
Lecturers Doing CL Role
UCU casework quite frequently brings to light instances of Lecturers being allocated Course Leadership duties improperly. The impropriety tends to be due to a breach of one or both of the following principles.
- A Lecturer can be allocated Course Leadership only if it is part of a L–SL Progression Plan and the duty lasts for no more than 12 months.
- Course Leadership, or at least the version of it that is compatible with being part of a L–SL Progression Plan, does not involve coordinating the course team in the delivery of the course. It only involves coordinating the course team in the design and documentation of the course and typically also taking lead responsibility for marketing and recruitment and for the cohorts of students on the course.
If either of these principles is being breached in your case, contact UCU for support.
Lancashire UCU Branch Committee