Joint Trade Union Statement: Voluntary Severance at Durham University
Eighteen months ago, Durham ran a deep and wide-ranging Voluntary Severance (VS) scheme. Together, the trade unions prevented compulsory redundancies, but VS still cost us around one in twenty of our colleagues, most of them in Professional Services. More posts have gone since, as departed staff are not replaced and fixed-term contracts are not renewed. No corner of the University has been left untouched, and we are still living with the consequences: longer hours, heavier workloads, lost knowledge and experience.
All of this was meant to put Durham on a stable financial footing. Management have announced millions in savings. Those savings came from staff.
Now we face another VS scheme, this time aimed at academic staff. Last year, the employer insisted the cuts would not harm workloads or students. Our members refused to let that claim stand, and the employer knows that staff are under strain. It raised its own people and culture risk rating during the year and began rolling out new stress risk assessment guidance post-VS. Yet it is about to make the same mistake again.
We recognise that Higher Education is under real financial pressure. But another round of VS will not fix the sector’s finances. It will add to stress, deepen staffing gaps, and pile more work onto those who remain. We urge the employer to stand with the unions and press the Government for funding reform and sector-wide solutions.
This round is all the harder to accept because management’s own accounts show the University moved from an underlying deficit of £6.7m to an underlying surplus of £3.6m in a single year. This scheme does not address short-term pressures or existing deficits. It is a deliberate choice to grow the surplus at the expense of staff.
Across the sector, university staff pay has fallen by up to 30% in real terms since 2011. At Durham, this is the third round of voluntary severance since 2024. We have said goodbye to friends and valued colleagues. We have covered their work and filled the gaps. We deserve better.
To every colleague worried about what this means for them: you are not on your own. Voluntary severance must be exactly that, and no one should feel pushed into leaving. Talk to your union before you make any decision or sign anything. Durham UCU, GMB, UNISON and Unite will support our members and the wider community through this, and we remain ready to work with management towards a fairer workplace. We will also keep holding management to account. Durham is our University, and it always will be.
Join UCU
University and Colleges Union (UCU), the largest union in UK higher education, represents academic and professional services staff at all stages of their careers, and with all types of employment or casual contract.
UCU membership at Durham University is open to all staff from grades 1 to 10, and all postgraduate researchers.
Durham UCU negotiates on behalf of its members with the University alongside the three other recognised unions. We are represented on a number of University committees and have agreed rights to consultation and negotiation. Reps and UCU staff support individual members with casework, and members organise to win collective, systemic improvements on pay, pensions, equalities, casualisation, and workload, locally and UK-wide. If you work at a university, the unions are your most effective means for protecting or improving your working conditions and remuneration.
