Union says strikes possible at town's university

A union has said it is "highly likely" it will ballot for industrial action if a university facing a £19m budget deficit makes more cuts.

The University and College Union (UCU) branch at the University of Northampton (UON) said it remained concerned about the institution's future.

It has called on the government to "fix the broken fee-based funding model".

UON said "economic factors" were "significantly impacting" the entire higher education sector as a result of "rising inflation, static income per student, and increasing costs".

The university offered a voluntary severance scheme to 500 staff in June 2024.

It said it needed to cut costs as a result of several factors, including frozen tuition fees and rising energy costs.

It received 97 applications from staff willing to leave or reduce their hours, and it launched a second trawl for staff willing to relinquish their posts.

In November, UON said it was considering closing some courses.

The university has about 1,800 staff and 15,000 students

In a statement, the UCU said it "remains concerned about the future of the university given the size of the workforce is lower, following voluntary severance schemes and redundancies".

Seven staff members had been served with compulsory redundancy and it had negotiated payments for staff who had lost some of their hours, a spokesperson added.

UON used a government loan to build its Waterside Campus. The university has said these repayments are contributing to the deficit.

UCU said it warned the previous leadership of the university in 2015 that the repayment terms put UON at the mercy of fluctuations in student recruitment, but their advice was ignored.

If further cuts were announced then "it is highly likely that the branch will ballot for all forms of industrial action", the union said.

A UON spokesperson said: "We have worked closely with our trade unions, including UCU, throughout this process and thank them for their ongoing contributions, however we would disagree with the union on a number of their assertions."

They said the university was focusing on providing economic and social benefits to the "town, region and country".

A Department for Education spokesperson said it had taken tough decisions to bolster universities' financial sustainability "despite the dire economic situation" it had inherited.

They added: "Institutions are autonomous, but we are committed to fixing the foundations of higher education to deliver change for students."

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