Union fears 400 jobs set to go at Sheffield in £23 million cuts

Union leaders fear hundreds of jobs are set to go as the University of Sheffield seeks to cut tens of millions of pounds from its staffing budget.

The University and College Union said it had opened a formal ballot over potential strike action at Sheffield, warning that the institution’s goal to save £23 million in staffing costs would equate to more than 400 jobs being axed.

UCU said that it believed as many 1,000 professional services staff were likely to be threatened with redundancy under a plan to restructure every school within the university.

On top of this, a restructure of Sheffield’s English language teaching centre had placed 109 staff at risk of redundancy, according to UCU, which has called on the university to use its reserves to protect jobs.

The impending cuts follow a slump in international student recruitment which, according to the university’s latest financial accounts, has been “adversely affected by UK government rhetoric and policy” as well as by “changes to the geopolitical landscape” such as China’s economic slowdown and Nigeria’s currency crisis.

In November Sheffield announced it was pausing work for a year on a planned £86 million five-storey laboratory, due to open in 2027, over a £50 million shortfall in its budget over the next two years.

Robyn Orfitelli, president of the Sheffield UCU branch, said that vice-chancellor Koen Lamberts had overseen an “unprecedented [number] of disruptive and damaging restructures” since he took over in 2018, but that was “nothing compared to the speed of change he is overseeing right now”.

“In just one academic year, we estimate he is placing as many or more staff at risk of losing their jobs than in the entire rest of his tenure. That is unacceptable, and the leadership of this university needs to hold itself accountable for what it is doing to staff, students, and the future of this institution,” said Orfitelli.

UCU called on Sheffield to use savings from previous surpluses – £6 million in 2023-24 and £44 million in 2022-23 – to adopt a “more measured approach to its current financial situation, rather than reducing the number of staff to an extreme extent in such a short timeframe”.

A spokeswoman for the university, citing the decrease in international recruitment as the driver of the cuts, said Sheffield had been “keeping colleagues and our campus trade unions informed and updated about the financial position and the range of targeted actions we are taking”.

“These include reviewing infrastructure projects and reducing spending, alongside carefully managing staff vacancies and offering a voluntary severance scheme to staff to help avoid the need for compulsory redundancies,” she said.

“We are firmly committed to supporting our colleagues and continuing to work constructively with our trade unions, whilst protecting our excellent research, teaching and student experience.”

Sheffield’s plans to reduce staffing costs, which follow a recent voluntary severance round, follow another grim week for higher education job cuts, with Bangor University seeking to cut about 200 jobs to make savings of £15 million.

It follows the announcement of numerous job cuts at UK universities in the opening weeks of 2025, with 400 jobs to go at Cardiff University, 200 posts at Durham University and 300 jobs at Newcastle University.

The universities of Edge Hill, Liverpool, Reading, Edinburgh, York and South Wales have all unveiled staff cuts in the past month.

Jo Grady, the UCU general secretary, said that staff “refuse to be the first in the line for any cuts” and said that management at Sheffield should rule out compulsory redundancies.

“There are a number of options management could take instead of seeking to axe 400 jobs, but so far there has been no attempt to work with us to use the university’s strong financial position to protect jobs or indeed to shift savings onto other areas,” she said.

jack.grove@timeshigheducation.com