News broke yesterday that Cardiff University has been reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) by the University and College Union (UCU), as reported here. HSE is the national regulator for workplace health, safety and welfare. It operates as an independent public body, sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions. Cardiff University academics ‘have considered suicide and abortion because of the cruel cuts programme’ according to Nation Cymru.
Cardiff University has an exceptionally poor record in health and safety. There is already evidence of a pre-existing problem with regulation of organisational workloads when Cardiff University was in a more financially stable state, given the sad deaths of Dr Mark Jervis & Dr Malcolm Anderson. Exploring and tackling the entrenched work pressures at Cardiff University—linked to Dr. Jervis’s death—might have helped prevent Dr. Anderson’s suicide less than four years later. The present Executive Board of Cardiff University has handled its current financial difficulties in an exceptionally chaotic and callous manner, as discussed earlier here.
Birmingham University has already been reported by UCU to the HSE, who have carried out a preliminary investigation into the management of stress. We’re entering a tough phase in UK Higher Education with deeper cuts & widespread forced layoffs, as well as increasing workloads for staff with the ensuing tension felt by students. It is a grim period to be a scholar, especially one being made jobless. So we expect the external regulators to take an increasing interest in what is happening at universities, both with regard to staff and students.
In the light of this, two pressure groups — the 21 Group and For the 100 — have now come together to carry out the first survey of both staff and students in UK Universities.
CTRL+ALT+DEL interrupts a system and forces a reset when it’s not working properly.
The CTRL+ALT+DEL+UNIVERSITY survey has 17 questions about discrimination, bullying, harassment and lack of care. Whether staff or student, if you have been mistreated, then please tell us.
We will use the CTRL+ALT+DEL survey to identify the poorest performing universities as regards lack of care. The data will inform a submission to the Health and Safety Executive about the safety of their staff and students. Please help us bring accountability to the seemingly untouchable elite who run our universities.
Complete the survey here
The survey collects any personal information for the sole purpose of preparing of a submission to the Health and Safety Executive. The data will only be retained for this purpose and, in any case, it will not be retained for longer than 5 years.
The full details of the privacy notice are here.
18 Comments
Anon · 13 June 2025 at 16:00
Congratulations. It is about time.
RM · 13 June 2025 at 18:25
Kudos for doing this – I dread to think what the figures will be like…
TigerWhoCametoET · 13 June 2025 at 19:36
This is wonderful to see happening. Thank you for your courage and leadership.
21percent.org · 13 June 2025 at 19:51
We already have enough incidents to draft the case for an HSE investigation against a couple of high profile universities because of multiple serious cases of bullying and harassment leading to health and safety violations.
We’d like eight — the Hateful Eight.
Which eight universities will make the Hateful Eight ?
YDdafadDdu · 13 June 2025 at 20:09
This is a league table that Cardiff University is going to win.
Sure there’s some serious competition, but Wendy’s going for top of the Hateful Eight.
Jonesey · 14 June 2025 at 09:58
it is going to be a real competition. Cardiff is abysmal, Birmingham an embarrassment, and Oxbridge a never-ending pit of lurking scandals and vipers. Meanwhile no-one has mentioned QMUL, Warwick or SOAS. Anyone want to place bets?
GamblingMan · 14 June 2025 at 10:43
University College London must be in with an excellent chance
The Christopher Backhouse case alone is so bad that it is difficult to find the words.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/12/former-ucl-academic-to-pay-damages-after-harassing-colleague-for-months
And there are all the other scandals at UCL as well 😉
My reckoning is UCL are the favourites to top the Hateful Eight. Oxbridge must be strong each-way bets, of course.
JD · 14 June 2025 at 11:22
Major issues at Cardiff University across multiple dimensions – including bullying, mobbing, nepotism, patronage, and favouritism in teaching allocations/career promotions
Hosseini · 14 June 2025 at 19:44
sounds like a lot of other places I could name
Oxonian · 15 June 2025 at 08:45
Sounds like Oxford, but without the rampant sexual harassment by lecherous middle-aged or elderly dons.
Cantabridgian · 15 June 2025 at 08:49
Sounds like Cambridge, but without the smugness
Walkers · 15 June 2025 at 09:12
Sounds like Leicester but without the paramilitary Human Resources department
Eileen Nugent · 14 June 2025 at 23:47
Surveys like these & gathering accurate data is definitely what is needed to reduce the amount of preventable serious ill health & preventable deaths in academia. I won’t fill out the survey as I have already raised concerns with the health and safety executive, once a concern has been raised HSE’s policy is that it does not wish to receive any further information in relation to concerns once they have been raised unless that new information changes the substance of the concern.
21percent.org · 15 June 2025 at 08:31
Universities have shown themselves unable to deal with serious abuses internally.
Paula Vennells and the Post Office should hire them for lessons in cover-ups.
This just leaves the external Regulators, the press and MPs
Eileen Nugent · 15 June 2025 at 17:29
It’s true that universities are currently unable to self-regulate on these serious issues but I have some hope of that changing in future, a novel two-step legal process seems to open up in some of these serious situations, one which can be used for the purposes of organisational self-regulation, if that assessment proves correct an individual in an organisation could force a higher level of organisational self-regulation by accessing the courts themselves.
21percent.org · 15 June 2025 at 18:49
This is an imaginative strategy — we hope it can work for all our sakes
Eileen Nugent · 16 June 2025 at 13:14
It’s an unusual combination of legal processes and a surprising combined set of legal arguments to have to make, it’s not the first legal action you would think of taking in one these serious situations but it seems to inherently have the right protections on individual, organisational, national regulator & public interest, an in-built mechanism for identifying whether the organisation has a strong regulatory case to answer or not & a mechanism to have the regulatory case addressed.
Anonymous · 16 June 2025 at 16:12
Thank you for taking this very important step.
The situation in Kent also requires particular attention:
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/more-redundancies-at-uni-as-staff-say-working-here-is-a-hel-307861/
I’m sure that many staff there will respond to this survey.
Keep in mind too that their latest attempt to recruit a new VC failed. Apparently the selection committee feels that the current leadership (and presumably their methods too) is better left unchanged. They are just not listening. This survey, and major upcoming Employment Tribunal hearings, might convince them to change their minds…