UCU Hallam Press Release – 10th March 2026
Liz Mossop, the VC of Sheffield Hallam University, has outlined the latest plans by the University Executive Board to make £26.6 million in savings next year, including £16 million from staffing costs, at an All Staff briefing today. These further proposed job cuts follow the loss of c.1000 jobs from across the university in recent years.
The UEB’s proposals would also involve other seismic changes to the university’s academic workforce and their terms and conditions. These plans will undoubtedly impact the university’s reputation as an institution with a proven track record for teaching and research, together with the knock-on financial effect of reputational damage within the sector.
UCU Hallam branch produced a financial plan in November 2025 to address and rebut the UEB’s narrative that the ongoing cycle of job cuts and restructuring was needed to balance the university’s books as a result of factors beyond their control. You can read the report here:
The UEB’s proposals include:
Dividing the academic workforce into 3 distinct groups:
- REF-able staff (those entered in the Research Excellence Framework)
- Teaching staff
- Research staff
This restructure facilitates the following changes to staff terms and conditions as follows:
Pensions: Here the proposal is to make savings of c.£ 8 million by
- Creating a new category of teaching-focused staff who are moved into employment by a wholly owned subsidiary company (a limited company) and transferred to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
- Moving existing research contracted staff out of Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) and into LGPS.
- Only retaining REF-able staff on the TPS. (These are academics whose research can be returned in the Research Excellence Framework).
Working Conditions:
- increasing weekly and annual teaching hours
- removing progression between staff grades and replacing it with a promotion-only model
- increasing teaching responsibilities for research staff
Taken together, these proposals represent an unprecedented attack on staff terms and conditions, including the TPS pension, significant workload intensification, a weakening of national framework protections and a fundamental restructuring of academic roles. UCU Hallam challenges these proposals and calls on the UEB to enter meaningful negotiations. The branch will ballot its members to defend their jobs and terms and conditions.