The government has finally revealed the funding allocation of the additional £302m including the purposes for the funding. You can find details of it in FE news here and the actual guidance from government can be found here.

Although colleges in our region will receive a proportion of the additional allocation, the government guidance makes it clear that the money can only be spent on capital expenditure and the purpose of it is to help rebuild the FE estate. That means that the money is not intended to be used on staff pay. The guidance explicitly states:

“Funding should not be used for non-capital expenditure. This includes but is not limited to:

• rent or service charges

• internal and external staffing costs

• recoverable VAT costs incurred

• advertising, marketing, communications or consultancy

• development or updating of websites”

If you have any comments, please add on. Yes, say what you think, but say it to all of us. We need to constantly talk to each other. This is what a true union is.

A little bit of update. SLG will give us confirmation of their response to our current pay claim early November. You should then expect to be contacted by us to express your opinion on whether or not to accept the deal. In the meantime, if you wish to react here to discuss the matter prior to getting an offer, feel free.

08/11/2024: an invitation to a JNCC meeting was sent to us this week. It will take place on 20/11/2024. Hopefully we should have the offer then.

22/11/2024: unfortunately, SLG is still not in a position to confirm a pay award. We now have to wait until January for this. It sounds like it all depends on student numbers. If they do agree for an increase, it will be from 01 January, with the first payment affected by it possibly being in February, backdating to January. If you wish to comment on this, you may use the reply button below or contact us through the UCU email address.

17/01/2025: We will receive an email from Paul today explaining that the pay claim will be confirmed next week as a result of waiting for the second draft to be accepted. We therefore have to wait one more week, but we will still consult on it.

17/02/2025: after consultation, we, as a union, have come to accept the pay rise of 2% (2.56% for highest lecturer scale). Whatever we voted, most of us feel we deserve more. Let’s keep an eye on that extra unconsolidated bit we should get in a few months. As usual, we should make a new claim at the end of the academic year. Any thoughts are welcome here.