A message from Provost Christine Ennew updating on reform of Statute 24 and its related Ordinances

28 March 2017

Dear colleagues

Further to my communication on 20 February regarding the reform of Statute 24, I’d like to update you on further developments in this respect.

As I previously outlined, consultation with the Trade Unions began in December 2016 regarding the proposed changes to Statute 24 and its related Ordinances and this process continues. To date, there have been several consultation meetings with all Trade Unions and extensive dialogue has taken place with local, regional and national UCU representatives regarding the reforms.

Alongside consultation with Trade Unions, we have discussed the proposals with the University Council, Heads of Departments and Senate and have received feedback from them and directly from the staff community.

This feedback has been very helpful and has led to us proposing a number of amendments to the draft documents currently published. Such amendments include changes to the disciplinary policy, greater clarity regarding academic freedom and additional provisions regarding the redundancy policy. We intend to publish these amendments for consultation with the wider staff community, once we have spoken further to all the Trade Unions in early April.

We have received a number of queries regarding changes to the role of the Head of Department in the disciplinary process, therefore we have developed a table to clarify which can be found in the FAQs (on the right of this page).

We would like to encourage staff to continue to feedback their thoughts and comments regarding the proposals either via their Trade Union or directly to our Employee Relations team via emprelations at warwick dot ac dot uk.

Following feedback from Senate and the Trade Unions the Council sub-group charged with overseeing the reform of Statute 24 and related Ordinances has agreed an extension to the timescale for the review. The final draft proposals will now be considered by the University Council at its meeting in July 2017, rather than May 2017. Following this, the proposed changes would come into effect from January 2018.

Best wishes,

Christine Ennew, Provost