A further update on the University’s cost savings proposals

In January, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, Professor Alistair Fitt, issued a statement on the outcome of a University consultation on reducing staff posts in some specific academic areas, and making other, pay-related staff cost savings across the University.

Subsequently, the University offered an expanded Voluntary Severance (VS) scheme for staff within some additional academic areas, which allowed further staff to be removed from risk of redundancy.

Over this period, there have been a number of media reports on the increasing financial challenges being felt at a large number of UK universities, and these pressures continue to be felt here at Oxford Brookes, despite the savings that the University has made. As a result, the University has recently confirmed to staff that it will be launching a much wider VS scheme to achieve further cost savings.  

We would like to emphasise that the University remains committed to all of our current and future students, and will ensure that changes to staffing do not preclude our students from continuing and completing successfully on their programme of study. Whilst the scheme is intended to maximise cost savings to the University, applications will be declined if closing a post would have an unacceptable impact on a team’s ability to deliver their teaching and other key objectives, or on the workloads of their colleagues.

We will continue to support staff throughout this period. We will also update the student FAQs webpage in the coming days to ensure timely and consistent information is made available to our students.