University finances hit by a further 3% cuts

Compulsory redundancies were "a last resort" but could not be ruled out, said David Maguire

A university is to cut a further 3% from its budget and "cannot rule out compulsory redundancies" this financial year on top of already planned savings, its vice-chancellor has said.

David Maguire, of the Norwich-based University of East Anglia (UEA), said rising inflation and a reduction in the number of international post-graduate students meant he must save "£11m against an expenditure of about £350m".

He would also focus on cuts to "non-pay" costs such as building maintenance, library acquisitions, travel and training activities to meet the savings.

Nadine Subair, University and College Union co-chair, said she was "absolutely shocked" at the news on top of last year's job losses.

Nadine Zubair said her union would work to save as many jobs as possible at UEA, which has about 17,000 students

Prof Maguire said the latest cuts were down to two issues - "inflationary costs hitting the university against a fixed undergraduate fee income" and a lack of "international post-graduate taught students" because of "visa changes brought in by the Conservative government".

"We believe at this stage that it will come from non-pay savings, some reductions in our head count and also by reducing vacancies as they arise through the course of the year," he said.

"We don't think that students and staff will notice... these are modest changes to our overall budget."

In the meantime, the university had "honoured a national pay award for staff this year".

The professor took over as vice-chancellor in May 2023 when UEA was was facing a £45m deficit and many staff took advantage of a voluntary severance scheme.

He says the first year of UEA's three-year plan to help it "recover from its financial crisis has gone well and we're well ahead of where we'd hoped to be by some margin".

Dr Zubair said she was "absolutely shocked, disappointed, angry, terrified that after a year where we'd lost hundreds of colleagues, we're back in a situation where we're potentially going to lose hundreds more".

"We're willing to negotiate on all sorts of remedies to make the savings without affecting people's jobs and for people not to be vulnerable because of the money that needs to be saved," she added.

"You can't grow a university without investing in it, so you can cut back, but how do you grow student recruitment if there are no books for them, if there are no people to teach them?"

The university plans to give staff more information on its provisional plans by the end of the month, following union consultation.