- Conference
- 2023 National Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 12 October 2022
- Decision
- Carried
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) gives people the right to request information from universities. The Act aims to promote a culture of transparency and accountability, and therefore facilitate better understanding of how the universities carry out their duties, why they make the decisions they do, and how they spend public money and that obtained from student tuitions fees and other income sources.
In the past a FOI was served on a university to find out how much it had spent on a piece of artwork. It turned out to be £1.4 million! £1.4 million stuck on the wall when our members were refused pay to keep up and catch up.
In 2018 Channel 4’s Dispatches programme showed that senior university managers had claimed almost £8 million in expenses over a two-year period.
Almost 200 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to institutions around the UK revealed for the first time the claims made by vice-chancellors and their staff.
We should utilise the legislation of FOIs to continue to see how university money is being spent. By highlighting to our members how some universities have prioritised spending for vice chancellors and their executive it can strengthen our evidence in relation to support for cost living pay increases, and in resisting attacks on terms and conditions.
A university’s purpose is to provide a quality service to students using their most valuable resource, our members, who deserve fair pay for the hard work they provide.
UNISON in Higher Education has a role, working with regions and supporting branches, in requesting FOI’s from university employers as it will take the pressure off individual branches and any possible local reactions from the employers.
We therefore call on the Higher Education National Service Group Executive (HESGE) to:
1)Seek to serve FOI’s on Universities, seeking information on bonuses, expenses, travel, private health care etc. when deemed appropriate by the HESGE.
2)Collate this information to use in national and local pay negotiations and campaigns.
3)Share this information with regions and branches to use in other campaigns on such issues, for example, as terms and conditions.