An interesting Employment Tribunal case has appeared on the gov.uk website that records the Tribunal decisions
F versus University of Nottingham has few details, though it is related to disability discrimination. (In cases involving disability discrimination, the Tribunal may make a “Restricted Reporting Order” (RRO) where evidence of a medical nature may cause serious harm or embarrassment if publicly exposed). The subject matter of the case is not our interest here, though as usual a University was behaving badly.
F won. In two judgments on 9 and 19 Septembers 2025, F won a total of £56,920.64 in compensation.
F was unrepresented, yet up against the feared Akua Reindorf KC of Cloisters Chambers. Her fee and expenses for appearing as counsel for the University of Nottingham will have been at least in five figures. The University will have also used its insurance lawyers (probably Shakespeare Martineau) and its legal services department. The total cost to the University was likely substantial, > £100,000s.
Many academics are mistreated by their University, but are reluctant to go to Employment Tribunals because of the perceived cost.
This is an example of a brave academic bringing a claim that involved little or no financial cost to him or herself, while the University incurred substantial legal expenses in defending and then losing the matter.
Academics are trained to pick up new information fast, scrutinise it in detail and understand it.
If you cannot afford a solicitor, most academics can easily represent themselves. You can also rely on guidance available from ACAS, the Employment Tribunal website and other reputable web sources (even chatGPT). Support from a trade union, even if limited, can also be useful.
Don’t wait forever for a University’s “internal investigation.” There’s a danger they’ll cynically drag it out just long enough for you to miss the Employment Tribunal deadlines.
When the University appoints its solicitor, you can communicate with them directly since you are not represented. Speaking by telephone on a “without prejudice” basis is more straightforward than trying to write formal legal letters, and you should keep a clear record of all conversations.
And remember, those calls cost the University hundreds of pounds an hour … 😉
Throughout the process, make repeated Data Subject Access Requests, maintain well-organised files containing your evidence, correspondence, timelines, and notes. Follow any case management orders from the Tribunal and prepare your witness statements, chronology and list of issues carefully. Present your case factually and clearly. Bringing a claim in this way usually involves little or no financial cost to you, while universities often incur substantial legal expenses in defending such matters.
There are plenty of other examples of unrepresented Davids triumphing over the lawyered up University of Goliaths.
Here is another famous one.
The claimant, Dr D’Arcy — a lecturer in Medieval and Early-Modern English Literature — was dismissed by University of Leicester in 2020 as part of a redundancy restructuring. The Employment Tribunal found that her dismissal was unfair and awarded her a remedy of £72,487.50. Dr D’Arcy was unrepresented and up against Tom Coughlin KC of Cloisters.
Please don’t put up with mistreatment from your University. You can do it yourself and win, if you have a strong case.
And if you are asking for moderate damages (~ £20,000), then your University will find it much cheaper to settle with you. So you probably won’t need to go to Tribunal at all.
62 Comments
Jobless · 7 December 2025 at 22:32
Are you a Registrar looking for a new job? Maybe your University does not love you? Maybe your VC does not love you?
What happens to ex-Registrars?
https://www.shma.co.uk/our-thoughts/shakespeare-martineau-appoints-director-of-higher-education
The former Registrar at the University of Nottingham joined … oh do sit down, you’ll never guess … Shakespeare Martineau to head their higher education consultancy
Shakespeare Martineau’s “education” practice claims to advise “around 100 universities and colleges across England & Wales”
https://www.ahua.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/AHUA-April-2016-Conference-for-web.pdf
Oh gosh look, the conference has the imprimatur of Cambridge University.
Anonymous · 8 December 2025 at 10:12
Bloody hell, that really says it all. I wonder how deep this particular rabbit hole goes…
TheResearcher · 8 December 2025 at 09:02
“Throughout the process, make repeated Data Subject Access Requests”
Yes, but people should be aware that universities will try to limit their access to relevant information using, for example, paragraph 16 and paragraph 19 of Schedule 2 to the Data Protection Act 2018. Paragraph 19 is about the exemption “for legal professional privilege” and UCam uses and abuses this exemption for issues that are not even in tribunals or courts. As the 21 Group knows, and it is always a good opportunity to remind people about the degrading state of UCam, Cambridge Legal “Sued University of Cambridge and Dr James Knapton, Information Compliance Officer, for refusing to disclose an employee’s personal data in breach of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) resulting in a pre-hearing settlement and the provision of previously withheld information.” (https://21percent.org/?p=1608)
Say No to Corruption · 8 December 2025 at 09:08
If a politician spent their time in office dragging out military conflicts and signing off on arms contracts at the public expense – and then, retired to the board of the very same defence companies they had contracted – this would be immediately flagged as corruption.
This situation seems no different. Anti-corruption investigators should have full remit to investigate in full the correspondence between university registrars and the legal services companies they have enriched from taxpayer funds.
While I understand why any ex-registrar would want to surround themselves with lawyers it is surely a huge liability for the latter companies to put themselves direct in the public crosshairs.
Anon · 8 December 2025 at 09:49
Companies that suggest any form of prospective future advantage or benefit to public officials responsible for legal contracts can be prosecuted under Section (1) of the Bribery Act 2010. University registrars are employees of public institutions.
What actions by a registrar could qualify as relevant under the Act?
2010 c. 23 Section (4.3)
“Anything that a person does (or omits to do) arising from or in connection with that person’s past performance of a relevant function or activity is to be treated for the purposes of this Act as being done (or omitted) by that person in the performance of that function or activity.”
Note the words “past performance of a relevant function” and the inclusion of acts of omission as well as comission. Legal contracting at British universities is a multimillion pound responsibility. It merits prioritisation for investigation.
Eileen Nugent · 8 December 2025 at 12:17
“Playing to the whistle – how to manage effectively whistleblowing disclosures”. The Catherine MacKenzie case was not classified as a whistleblowing case. Very difficult to play to a whistle when it is neither heard nor seen.
Higher education consultancy & Shakespeare Martineau : This organisation seems to be building one section of its business on the back of the problems that it is actively contributing to the generation of with another section of its business. It is extracting significant public funds in the course of blocking higher education organisations from listening to their own staff about problems in higher education – thus preventing effective solutions emerging – and then extracting even more public funds to get higher education organisations to listen to it – instead of their own staff – about the efficient running of higher education organisations. This organisation is on that is blocking efficient problem solving in higher education, it is a root case of systemic inefficiency. It is sucking health out of higher education, it is sucking finances out of higher education, it is sucking life out of higher education.
This law firm was involved in an employment case in higher education that resulted in a charging order being put on a legal academics home to pay for the legal fees incurred in the employment case. That is how a subset – but not all – of the legal representatives in this law firm are paying for their own accommodation. I wouldn’t go into an employment legal process with a university if that was the law firm providing the university legal representation. I would go to the national regulators and say that this is not a fair and reasonable law firm to deal with on that specific type of legal case. These are life altering-processes. I will not have my life unnecessarily altered and be left with no prospect of those unnecessary life alternations being undone by an overly aggressive law firm that is extracting funds out of higher education to the detriment of higher education and of the law profession itself. Higher education is suffering, the legal representatives who are doing the right thing in this firm are suffering, and the law profession is suffering because of the actions of individuals who will push for any outcome that is in their best interests irrespective of whether that outcome is in the best interests of any other person.
Eileen Nugent · 8 December 2025 at 13:08
A different law firm, a different KC, the same law firm at a different point in time, the same KC at a different point in time – that could be the difference between having unnecessary life alterations and being left with no prospect of those unnecessary life alternations being undone & fair and reasonable treatment where any problems that arise in a case are efficiently solved.
Eileen Nugent · 8 December 2025 at 13:40
In other countries e.g. Germany the law itself protects those who have behaved fairly and reasonably against an unfair dismissal i.e. there is a legally enforceable right to a reinstatement after a substantive unfair dismissal so this is always an option a worker can choose. It is only necessary to choose competent legal representation that can behave fairly and reasonably to represent yourself to ensure protection from unfair dismissal.
In the UK a person who has behaved fairly and reasonably in an unfair dismissal situation is only protected if both sides of the legal case are represented by legal representatives who behave fairly and reasonably in that situation. Legal representatives in the UK are prepared to work with their organisational clients to block an effective remedy – reinstatement or re-engagement – in cases of substantive unfair dismissal when the unfairly dismissed person is repeatedly stating that financial compensation is not the most effective or an effective remedy in the situation. In the UK you can then argue that evidence of the past behaviour of a legal representative involved in your case showing a tendency to be overly aggressive towards those raising valid legal claims in relation to employment – i.e. a history of blocking the most effective remedy or any remedy at all from being found in an unfair dismissal case – could diminish your own legal protection from an unfair dismissal in a way which would not be possible in other countries.
21percent.org · 8 December 2025 at 14:06
Excellent news. More defeats for the administration
https://www.reporter.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/vote-results-20251204.pdf
They lose on Guild of Benefactors — a victory for openness.
They lose on injunctions as well.
21percent.org · 9 December 2025 at 08:35
***UPDATE***
Council intends to ignore these Graces, since it is the Trustee body for the University and it considers itself to be sovereign over all legal and financial matters
Brecht said it best:
“Would it not be easier
For the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”
We hope that we’re close to the stage where our Honeckers and Mielkes are driven out
Anon · 9 December 2025 at 09:16
That is absolutely shocking. Our management is now at war with our university.
The last time I checked it is the Regent House that is the governing body of the University of Cambridge while Council serves as executive.
If the government declared that it would no longer comply with parliamentary votes then we would know what that meant.
21percent.org · 9 December 2025 at 09:23
Agreed, these people have no more legitimacy to run the place.
- · 9 December 2025 at 10:00
The University of Cambridge is registered as a Charitable Trust.
Its formal mission statement as require under law is:
“To contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence”.
Charity fraud, as per the Encyclopedia Britannica, is defined as “fraud that occurs when charitable organizations that solicit funds from the public for philanthropic goals… use the monies that they collect for purposes not intended by the donors.” (https://www.britannica.com/money/charity-fraud)
The purposes of the university’s charitable status are clearly defined: “education, learning and research”.
These are the purposes of the monies provided by by our donors, including government departments, foundational partners, and our fee-paying students.
They do not encompass excessive levels of executive compensation, contracts to legal firms and public relations agencies in response to legitimate complaints regarding sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation, nor the large and ever-growing share of the budget that is consumed by human resources, the registrary, and other branches that do not contribute to “education, learning and research”.
There is clear interest that the membership of Guild, who are major benefactors of over £1 million to the University, be at a minimum available to the Regent House, the university’s formal governing body, so that it can uphold its duty to ensure compliance with our charitable mandate.
Refusal by the Council to do this raises clear concerns in relation to motive. Such fears would be easily settled were they to adhere to the majority vote decision of the Regent House — to which they are formally responsible.
Merriam Burton · 9 December 2025 at 10:20
The stated justification for the Council’s decision makes utterly no sense?
In my opinion it is hogwash to claim that they are acting to protect the privacy of high-net worth donors when any person who gives such vast amounts to any university (or other charitable entity) is almost always besides themselves to advertise their philanthropic good deed.
One logical reason to seek to hide their name would be when the matter could bring disrepute to either party… and while I struggle to think why or how this would be the case here, there is surely good cause to demonstrate that this hypothesis is unfounded, especially in light of their dogged insistence in refusing to comply with the outcome of this vote.
21percent.org · 9 December 2025 at 11:13
One newsworthy example is the subsequent embarrassment caused to Harvard and MIT from donations given by Jeffrey Epstein
Though we trust that no Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University has done anything as bad as Larry Summers (27th President of Harvard University) who sought not just money, but also sex and relationship advice from a convicted paedophile.
University senior management wields vast power, but when the fall comes, it’s brutal. Life time bans for Summers as everyone distances from him.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/02/business/larry-summers-lifetime-ban-economic-association-epstein-ties
TheResearcher · 9 December 2025 at 09:56
“We hope that we’re close to the stage where our Honeckers and Mielkes are driven out”
Even if the Registrary and the Director of HR leave, UCam will remain a circus. Remember, the VC will remain; all Pro-VCs will remain (in particular the Pro-VC for Community and Engagement!); the Academic Secretary will remain; the Lead HR Business Partners will remain; the Director of Health & Safety will remain; the Head of OSCCA will remain; etc, etc, etc. I do not see how/why these people would change their behaviour simply because the Registrary and the Director of HR left. We need a proper restructuring of the place, but I hope I am wrong.
point of note · 9 December 2025 at 13:19
the whole point of charitable trusteeship is to ensure that the management upholds the purposes for which the charity was founded.
an organization which is more responsive to investors or donors over its trustees is a business, not a charity.
Eileen Nugent · 8 December 2025 at 14:11
Go back to the cab rank and hire another cab because I won’t be run over by a cab that has already run over others to pay for its cab fare.
Eileen Nugent · 8 December 2025 at 18:36
Let’s enable a university to unfairly dismiss an academic specialising in law for raising potential human rights violations. Then once a university has been enabled by legal representatives to make a show of the whole legal system why not finish by put a charging order on the legal academics home to cover the legal fees incurred followed by getting them banned from courts. No one in Cloisters barrister set felt the need to mount a rescue operation in a human rights case that is going that far south.
It’s an academic and their chosen academic obsession is law, in becoming a legal academic they are effectively stating that they would like to obsess about law for the rest of their life. Where is that academics mental energy going to be directed for the rest of their life – at a human rights law problem, at the blockage that brought their academic career in human rights law to an abrupt end – at Warwick University, at Shakespeare Martineau, at Cloisters Barrister set, at the whole legal system.
Law professor with ‘profound sense of grievance’ banned from courts:
“The fact is that, whatever the underlying merits of her long-running disputes with the defendants, the claimant has grossly misused the procedures of the courts and tribunals. She refuses to recognise that fact and seems to assert a right to continue in the same vein. I conclude that there is a serious threat that that conduct will continue” Read : The legal system has no interest in examining the underlying merits of any long-running dispute because the legal system has no interest in solving long-running legal problems so it will use its powers to ban any person with a long-standing interest in solving complex legal problems – a legal academic – from courts.
It is not in the public interest to do this because other people – not legal academics – may feel unsafe entering a legal system that managed to get a legal academic into a position where a charging order was put on their home to cover legal fees incurred challenging human rights violations in that legal system and then subsequently got the same legal academic into a position where they were banned from courts to prevent them from ever getting out of that situation.
Before banning a person from courts there has to be a final examination of the underlying merits of any long-running dispute. There can’t be a statement like this banning someone from courts because that statement says despite the fact that we don’t know the underlying merits of the long-running dispute we are prepared to ban this person from courts to prevent the underlying merits of the long-running dispute from being examined ever again. Anyone would develop a ‘profound sense of grievance’ if they were continuously forced to deal with courts that are more focussed on preventing the underlying merits of a long-running dispute from being examined instead of getting the underlying merits of a long-running dispute thoroughly examined and finally putting an end to that long-running dispute.
Eileen Nugent · 8 December 2025 at 22:08
What about the other 36,000 members of the University of Warwick – the bulk of one of the clients in the case – should they all be left in limbo about the underlying merits of one side of a case in a long-running dispute between the University of Warwick and one of its legal academics? What if upon a final examination of the underlying merits of both sides of the case in a long-running dispute it turns out the initial problem that generated the long-running dispute was with the behaviour of University of Warwick and not with the behaviour of the legal academic? Don’t they have the right to an examination of the underlying merits of both sides of the case before the whole case is blocked from any further examination by the courts ever again?
It’s a recurrent set of problems :
I. employment legal processes are overly focussed on (a) finding flaws with the behaviour of an individual (framing every problem as an isolated individual problem generated by the behaviour of an individual and with the potential impact limited to an individual) and (b) avoiding the examination of any flaws with the behaviour of an organisation (framing organisational behaviour as an organisational problem which is beyond the scope of examination in an individual case with the potential impact limited to an individual). Any flaws with the behaviour of that particular organisation have the potential to impact 36,000 people. A decision to ban a long-running dispute from the courts without any final examination of the underlying merits of both sides of the case makes no sense for either client – neither the 36,000 members who make up the University of Warwick nor the individual bringing the case – and it makes no sense for the public who currently have no interaction with the University of Warwick but who could in future have some kind of interaction with the University of Warwick.
II. The legal processes that are being accessed to examine potential violations of human rights do not appear to have human rights values embedded in them. The courts administering these legal processes and the legal representatives driving these legal processes through the courts do not appear to embody human rights values when conducting legal cases to examine potential violations of human rights through these legal processes. There seems to be very little concern for what is happening to a persons human rights as they progress through a legal process to examine potential violations of their human rights. If a legal process itself has the potential to generate human rights violations of equal or greater magnitude to any human rights violations that are to be examined with the legal process then the legal process has the potential to generate a dynamic justice instability for a person. A dynamic justice instability is where the justice end-point in a case is continuously being shifted by the legal process itself – as additional potential violations of human rights come into play during the legal process itself – before the justice end-point is finally put beyond all reach of a person by e.g. banning a person from courts without any final examination of the underlying merits of the persons long-running dispute with an organisation.
IMAGINARY · 9 December 2025 at 06:41
You have no chance with internal process! Only ET and Courts!
21percent.org · 9 December 2025 at 06:50
Agreed — many of the “independent” barristers are also conflicted.
So if the University finds an external investigator, they have often been chosen carefully to give the “right result”
MUSKETEER · 9 December 2025 at 10:22
It is worse than that! The ‘independent’ barrister might not give the ‘answer’ the University wants. So the oligarchy will use ‘confidentiality’ to hide the barrister’s report and manipulate it to get at the outcome they want. They will find a ‘Responsible Person’ to read into the report what they want. It is truly machiavellian! D’Artagnan tells me this is exactly what they did with the School of Clinical Medicine/CRUK scandal!
SPARTACUS · 9 December 2025 at 16:45
The current regime at UCam is damaged beyond repair! VC, ProVCs, Registrary, Academy Secretary, Head of HR, and Council are incompetent, lack integrity, have lost the trust of both Faculty and students (undergraduate and postgraduate), and are all complicity with horrific behaviour and unlawful acts! The whole lot has to go! There should be no vacuum! The Chancellor, under the Statutes, can ‘take over’ and put in place an interim emergency team until new appointments are made!
MUSKETEER · 9 December 2025 at 18:01
I have an idea: why does the Chancellor not resign in protest and to really sound the alarm? If he does not have the guts to act he should resign!
TheResearcher · 9 December 2025 at 18:10
I am not sure how many of you contacted the Chancellor to report your experiences, but to be clear, I already did several weeks ago. He asked me if I had contacted my College so that they take the issues “up with the University authorities.” Incidentally, I have no support from my College and earlier today I even received an email from the Master Lord McDonald through my Tutor that reads “He [I] can write as many times as he likes (and indeed request or demand that others copy their emails to him to me) but I longer open or read any of his emails.” I wonder if Lord Smith should be aware of this new development…
Grace · 10 December 2025 at 08:08
It sounds like the Chancellor was at least trying to be supportive. He didn’t ignore the issue like the rest of them do. Simply as a point of strategy I don’t think it makes sense for him to resign. There may be others he could ask to resign, of course, based on the best interests of the organisation and the facts as they come to light. But we also need a full and independent inquest to ensure fair assessment in each instance.
MUSKETEER · 10 December 2025 at 13:13
The point is: the Chancellor has a rather simple choice to make
1- sit wearing his robes and do nothing (if he does so he becomes an accomplice of the current rotten oligarchy).
2- step in using the Statutes, which literally (not traditionally) state he is the top University officer.
3- resign to alert Parliament to the horrible situation at UCam.
I hope he chooses 2!
TheResearcher · 10 December 2025 at 13:53
Note that the senior management does not follow the Statutes. I am thus not sure if option 2 would fix the problem as the Chancellor could be ignored. I think option 3 could have more impact because UCam needs urgent external intervention.
D'ARTAGNAN · 9 December 2025 at 18:52
Prof Drinkalot is… doing it again!
Prof Teflon is… claiming he did not get his lavish College accomodation paid by the College! He lives… to lie and to have an inappropriate bedfellow!
Somehow Drinkalot and Teflon still find time to continue bullying others!
Prof Smallman is happy to have Drinkalot and Teflon on his School!
This is a classy University!
UNBELIEVABLE · 9 December 2025 at 19:44
“VC, ProVCs, Registrary, Academy Secretary, Head of HR, and Council are incompetent, lack integrity, have lost the trust of both Faculty and students (undergraduate and postgraduate), and are all complicity with horrific behaviour and unlawful acts! The whole lot has to go!”
Eileen Nugent · 10 December 2025 at 11:40
The university brought in a new VC when the university was not ready for a new VC and when it was in a state of blocking itself from making the changes it needed to make to be ready for a new VC. If the university thinks it can do that again – then the university needs to think again. I don’t think that people in some of these positions realise what position the university is now in otherwise no one would be trying to undermine the current VC. Whilst that strategy of undermining the VC may have worked before it’s now organisational quicksand – because the organisation has already done this to a VC & it’s not therefore an isolated organisational incident wrt a VC- and an organisational quicksand situation has many unexpected organisational health risks. The organisation lacks integrity i.e. its grievances and concerns processes don’t work so if the organisation thinks its in a position to put its current VC through them then I would suggest otherwise. There are others in the organisation who had the power over many years to fix these grievance and concerns processes and if they don’t now get to work and fix them before they end up in them then maybe they will manage to fix them when they finally end up in them.
Eileen Nugent · 10 December 2025 at 12:31
Universities think they can do anything to an academic leader. Allow the academic leader to be sacked and allow another academic leader to be appointed on the back of an organisational fault that has been baked in to the organisation but if there are these types of operational organisational problems in a university – problems with organisational grievance and concerns processes – this is not the case. If those in senior operational roles allow a new leader to be put in place but do nothing effective to fix an existing operational organisational problem that an academic leader could themselves be exposed to – existing problems with grievance and concerns processes – and that existing operational organisational problem is damaging the reputation of the university and by extension the reputation of any academic leader appointed by the university this is then serial organisational abuse of academic leaders by a university.
Those in senior operational roles in the university are responsible for how the university handles its employment contracts, how it handles its grievances, how it handles its concerns, how it handles its health and safety, how it handles its whistleblowing. Those in senior operational roles don’t have to : produce academic research and effectively manage research quality, do teaching and effectively manage teaching quality, get research funding and effectively manage funding stability, continuously seek donor funding and manage organisational relationships with donors, do educational outreach to widen participation, effectively manage curriculum reviews, do student examinations and effectively manage student examinations, effectively manage AI regulation in learning, read and navigate the landscape of higher education globally, act to make sure graduate employment outcomes are maintained at a level that makes higher education a sound investment for students, create an educational environment that is conducive to both academic free speech (a specialised form of free speech) and other forms of free speech, consider the impact of an international levy on student fees and organisational mitigation strategies. Those in senior operational roles are expected to fix problems with the everyday operation of the university : employment contracts, grievance processes, concerns processes, whistleblowing processes.
Eileen Nugent · 10 December 2025 at 12:49
The university is going to have to sort out its problems under some academic leader. The thing to appreciate in this situation is that if the knee-jerk organisational reaction to this particular organisational problem is to continuously change the academic leader that is a sign that the organisation has not understood the nature of the organisational problem it is dealing with. The organisation is then unable to sort out its own organisational problems out because it incapable of recognising the root cause of its own organisational problems. The organisation is going to have to do the organisational hard yards to sort this particular problem out.
Eileen Nugent · 10 December 2025 at 13:30
That’s a Cambridge problem – clinging to an existing organisational process long after it stopped delivering any outcome of any use to anyone.
Look at the Catherine MacKenzie case, look at the end result of a combination of grievance, concerns & whistleblowing processes, end result = substantive unfair dismissal left in place – this is what happens to people in the university who follow all the rules and regulations, useful outcomes are not being produced with the processes, the processes are not fixing the problem, it’s not worth engaging with them, it’s a waste of higher education funding engaging with these useless processes and members of Regent House are obliged to point out when higher education funding is being wasted on useless processes.
Eileen Nugent · 10 December 2025 at 14:04
What is the one position in society where non compliance with a reinstatement/re-engagement after a substantive unfair dismissal is likely to have the maximum impact on a person – permanent academic post. What is the one operational organisational employment action that a university could take that has potential implications for the employment rights of every permanent academic in the UK – denial of a reinstatement/re-engagement after a substantive unfair dismissal.
The Higher Education Act 2004 is in place to ensure that there is a minimum level of uniformity in staff treatment across different higher education institutions. The VC and council in Cambridge could not be consulted in that situation because it was the Chair of the Board of Scrutiny who had been substantively unfairly dismissed but other VCs in other UK universities could and should have been consulted.
The existence of the Higher education act 2004 means that there needs to be some minimum level of uniformity in staff treatment across the higher education sector – the approach to compliance with reinstatement/re-engagement orders after the substantive unfair dismissal of a permanent academic is something that then needs to be collectively decided at the level of the higher education sector and not at the level of a university working in the higher education sector.
That is the position that those in senior operational roles put the university in.
Eileen Nugent · 10 December 2025 at 14:15
The organisational strategy of undermining the current VC and then trying to find another academic leader in the whole of the UK who has not already been undermined by the exact same organisational fault that is generating problems for the current VC seems like a high risk strategy to me but perhaps there is some error in my risk calculations.
Eileen Nugent · 10 December 2025 at 14:38
This particular set of organisational processes – grievance and concerns processes – cannot be fixed using overly aggressive and adversarial tactics that increase the probability of false information entering into a grievance and/or concern and/or generating further grievances and concerns, reducing the accuracy of case handling and the overall efficiency of the case handling process.
Believe it or not processes that embed human rights values run by people who embody human rights values have the potential to be more efficient. The HR person handling my case is a person and in seeking a resolution to my own ongoing work-related stress situation I cannot lose sight of the fact that e.g. HR staff also need to maintain themselves in a position where their own work-related stress levels are sustainable.
D'ARTAGNAN · 10 December 2025 at 15:06
Eileen you seem to expect some kind of normality in Cambridge’s current ‘regime’!! It does not exist! The place is falling apart. So Chancellor needs to step in and gather around him a team to rule the place for 2-3 years to rescue it from total disaster. There are plenty of honest faculty with integrity left! He needs to lead, find those individuals and get rid of the current lot for good! None of them can stay!
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 14:07
Yes I expect Cambridge to return to a state of normality under its current Vice Chancellor.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 14:11
Based on the analysis that it is not possible for Cambridge to return to a state of normality under the leadership of anyone in any other role in the university other than the Vice Chancellor because that is how the university is currently set up – the Vice Chancellor role is the leadership role in the university.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 14:14
Getting the Chancellor to step, it’s an organisational cop out.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 14:28
The use of the American Queen label is interesting because the one thing that members of any Royal family learn quickly on the job is how to survive a societal psychological punishment beating i.e. the first bit of public scandal they generate as a member of a Royal family.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 15:45
I liked the people in Cambridge so it really was the working conditions, the employment contracts and the useless organisational processes that deliver no useful outcome for anyone that spoiled Cambridge for me.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 18:15
Closing Vet school – that’s food production, that’s farming – that’s the most basic element of national survival. Will the School of Biological Sciences be taking their School of the Biological Sciences Strategic Vision and Plan and trying to exchange it for some non-existent food in the shops after an an outbreak of a disease disrupts all the food supply chains. How about the General board, what do you think you would get for that vision and plan – one root vegetable or two?
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 18:33
The farming community rarely protests but if their vet supply is being cut off by a university singling out a vet department for closure whilst leaving all its other departments open and there is no government intervention to prevent that & some are also being taxed out of the minimum resources required the maintain inter-generational farming communities that are a core element of farming then I think that combination could be enough to get them out protesting. Less vets = higher vet fees = longer wait times for a vet = extra risk to their livestock = extra strain on their resources.
IMAGINARY · 11 December 2025 at 18:41
I don’t think you realize how low UCam has descended!…
Just think about these Profs: Drinkalot, Teflon, ViciousWoman, Crookery, Smallman. That is just one School!! And presiding over it all… the totally clueless American Queen! Just picture it all!!!
Wow!! · 11 December 2025 at 19:34
You are day dreaming! The lady is hopeless! She just wants money and regalia!
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 10:16
There are no Vet schools in the bigger universities in London e.g. Imperial or UCL and there is none in Oxford. Currently veterinary medicine in Cambridge is the coupling of that particular undergraduate degree course to the university with the highest intensity of teaching (probability of any errors in the understanding of veterinary medicine being picked up by the student themselves in small group teaching) and the highest overall research power (probability of exposure to new developments in any area of active research relevant to advancing veterinary medicine). Closing the vet school – as opposed to driving improvements in the vet school – would have a significant impact for UK veterinary medicine as a whole.
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 10:39
If a society is interested in advancing, then when things are starting to get tough that society will close its worst performing degree courses and not sit back and let some of its best performing degree courses close just because society cannot find a way to reroute some societal funding from A to B.
If when things get tough the worst is left in place while the best is let be dismantled then any real chance for societal improvement is continuously blocked and things are only going to get even tougher until finally that society gets some common sense an starts finding ways to keep it best performing degree courses in place and closing its worst performing degree courses should any need to close.
It’s not even clear that any veterinary medicine course in the UK course needs to close so they could all collectively up their performance together. Where is the evidence that this vet school needs to close and that this is in the interests of the UK? Where is the evidence that this particular veterinary degree course is not currently needed in the UK?
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 11:52
The UK is a country where people are OK with top singers and footballers being paid millions, defending that is not elitist but to say an academic should get paid a fair and continuously stable wage (i.e. one where they can afford to buy a house) to teach a veterinary medicine course or to research veterinary science and that a high performing veterinary medicine course should be adequately funded to maintain a high level of course performance is elitist.
The academic and students on the course could have grown up in a council estate or on a farm, they could have made themselves elite from scratch with no societal background advantage but working out the right answers for themselves and advancing their own lives while also advancing the lives of others. When they reach the point where an elite label is attached to them then suddenly everything they say and do after than is wrong and they deserve no ongoing societal support. Never mind the fact they are continuously performing a vital service at a high level for society.
They are not this irrelevant thing enough, they are too much of this irrelevant thing, they don’t have enough of this irrelevant background, they have too much of this irrelevant background, they don’t have enough of these personal characteristics that are completely irrelevant to the job they are doing for society, they have too many of these personal characteristics that are completely irrelevant to the job they are doing for society. The laser focus on whether a person can do their job role for society at a high level has been completely lost which is why there are now bigger societal problems.
Where is the uniformity in staff treatment across the higher education sector if the staff on one of the higher performing veterinary medicine courses in the UK are being fired and nothing is happening to other staff on veterinary medicine courses in the UK? Where is the actual planning here? Where is the OK we are closing here so everyone is then going there?
No common sense in the UK. If the UK did to footballers what it does to its academics they would all be permanently physically crippled and no one would ever score a goal, if it did to singers what it does to its academics they would all be permanently hoarse.
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 12:00
There is a higher education regulator. If they don’t do this, then what do they actually do for the country? It is in the interests of students that courses capable of a higher level of performance are kept running.
There is a skills minister. If they don’t do this, then what do they actually do for the country?
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 12:26
The lack of effective government support for the higher education sector is limiting the speed, efficiency and effectiveness of the response of higher education sector to the current crisis in higher education. The skills ministers comments in relation to universities and the current higher education crisis lack both accuracy and depth of understanding in relation to the crisis situation itself which indicates the probability of an the higher education sector receiving effective government support throughout the crisis situation in order to get through it is lower than it would be if the current skills minister were to develop a more accurate and deeper understanding of the current crisis in the higher education sector.
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 12:54
In principle working on the development of effective identity politics and effective ways to support those less fortunate globally are very good things for a country to do, but when a country is in facing a potential crisis situation, a collective survival situation, managing that collective survival situation has to come first because a country has to function at a very high level and to maintain itself in a state where it can continuously reduce and effectively manage all other more fundamental stressors on society – food, housing, health, education stressors – to continuously and sustainably work on the development of effective identity politics – additional societal stressor – and on finding effective ways to support those less fortunate globally – additional societal stressor. There is nothing wrong with societal stressors, they have the potential to increase the strength of a society but they need to be effectively managed in order to ensure that an increase in societal strength is the outcome of the societal stressors.
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 13:16
Advances in effective identity politics and finding ways to help those at significant disadvantage globally have been made and more will be made in future so this is a temporary shift to address more fundamental challenges which will then make it possible to then shift back to addressing these more complex societal challenges.
Any politician in any country that thinks that then can get elected to a parliament and then can get that country they are a member of parliament of to act in the interests of another country, a private company or an industry against the interests of the country they have been elected to contribute to the governance of will not be tolerated in this type of potential crisis situation. It is the situation itself that determines the tolerance level that people will have for that, nothing else, the tolerance will be extremely low, people won’t put up with it.
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 14:13
An advanced society has to get any changes to its human rights laws correct or else it will become so stressed and inefficient as a society that it won’t be able to function normally as an advanced society. It can be “we’ll do this” when the constraints of the situation – needing to continuously run a functioning legal system that offers effective legal protection to a society – mean there is a very low probability that whatever is being proposed will work for a society, do anything useful for a society or fix any problem for anyone in a society.
These type of changes for a society have to be done by the people with the most accurate and in-depth understanding of human rights law, the people have the highest probability of getting any changes in human rights laws right for a society. Those who are the most capable of predicting the consequences of any changes in human rights laws for society so that positive consequences can be identified and moves can be made towards them and negative consequences can be identified and avoided.
Otherwise a society could end up in a very difficult societal position because a change is made to fix one problem for one group of people in a society that then creates an even bigger problem for an even bigger group of people in a society which another change is then made to try to fix which then creates an even bigger problem for an even bigger group of people in a society and before you know it everyone in a society is continuously having their human rights violated and the whole society is continuously stuck in an inefficient and ineffective societal state and unable to function normally as an advanced society.
Anon · 12 December 2025 at 10:19
Get rid of those who advise them too, the clueless and the dangerously malicious ones who manipulate the system from within with “HR” and “legal” advice.
These incompetent or sick individuals are the vehicles of the rot. They create the HR problems and then make themselves available to sort them out, making sure no process can ever lead to a fair and just conclusion, assuming it is ever concluded at all.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 13:08
I had one of these meetings where human rights values were embedded in a process and the people in the meeting embodied human rights values as the last meeting I had in college which was part of the leaving process. I thought continuing to keep me employed in a safeguarding position in a college – separate legal entity to university – beyond that point in time would have been a potential waste of college resources – pastoral support and financial.
The central university seemed to be unprepared to address any organisational fault that I happened to get caught up in. Previously keeping me in that safeguarding role – despite the fact I could not fulfil the duties of that role – had not been a waste of college resources because I was in a state of fluctuating mental health with some episodes of severe mental ill health during and after the pandemic due to a combination of factors the most significant of which was an ongoing major work-related stressor – active whistleblowing situation in the university – coupled with covid-induced ill health.
I was not then in a position to cut off a college lifeline – private health insurance enabling access to specialist brain healthcare that the NHS would have blocked access to : consultant neurologist, consultant psychiatrist, clinical psychologist – that college had continued to offer throughout that whistleblowing situation. What had changed at the point took the decision to leave college was that I had managed to get my health to a state where I could cut the college lifeline – safely discharge myself from the specialist brain healthcare that private health insurance had given me access to – and leave the college to free up college resources for the college to use to carry out its other ongoing higher education activities for society.
I was a full college fellow and a regular attender of the governance meetings. I was aware that the college had a more limited pool of resources than most other colleges. I had a legal obligation to do something about any potential waste of college resources occurring at that level – ~ £10k pa, private health insurance, college accommodation, ongoing pastoral support – relative to the overall pool of resources available to the college. I had to continuously weigh up the overall state of my health in the ongoing situation and balance that against overall strain that was continuously being put on the college by the ongoing situation.
I also had to continuously calculate the probability of the central university addressing the concerns in future, of it removing the major work-related stressor, unblocking all the employment in the colleges and department, restoring access to the labs, restoring an academic career path through the organisation so that I could then exit the organisation into a permanent academic post at another UK university. After 3 years in that situation, nothing was changing in the university and the college was still under significant resource strain so as soon as my health reached some bare minimum of stability I took that window of opportunity to leave.
I informed the college I was leaving the safeguarding position for health and safety reasons and went into a state of unemployment dependent on financial resources that I had accumulated throughout my previous employment. My partner was also in a state of unemployment at the time. We were evicted from college accommodation because another college was taking it back to renovate it so we had to transition to other accommodation in Cambridge – for continuity of medical treatment in case I needed further medical treatment – which has a very limited pool of affordable family accommodation that there is high competition for.
We relied on family to provide financial liquidity to us to enable us to buy a house to reduce our overall accommodation costs until my partner secured better employment and we could repay family. We got through this point of maximum stress as a family and now are in a better position as family than we ever were when I was working for the university. No more leave your accommodation, no more unnecessary accommodation moves, no more renew your employment contract, no more temporary worker agreement that was never agreed, no more leave the only job you have any real interest in to do any of these other jobs that you have absolutely no interest in. If it’s just a case of making money by doing something useful for society then I can make money. I don’t have to take a job that I have absolutely no interest in, in an organisation continuously vomiting “organisational wellbeing” all over its working minds to make money. No more of unnecessary crap clogging our family life up and generating unnecessary misery for us all.
I had a final leaving meeting with the Senior Tutor (my line manager), the newly appointed Bursar and college HR where everyone in that meeting treated me dignity and respect, where that treatment was reciprocated and where the college offered a leaving party after a Governing body meeting. That college office where that last meeting took place was like a safe port in an ongoing organisational storm. I couldn’t take the pain of a leaving party after a governing body meeting. My health was not robust at that stage – it was the bare minimum necessary to cope with leaving the university to go into a NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) state. That is a state that I have never been before so it was another close-to-infinite emotional pain spike to make that transition into that state for the first time in my life but my health wasn’t robust enough to enter any other state – i.e. to get or generate other employment – so there was no real choice at the time but to enter that state.
The interaction of the ongoing situation in the university and active areas of college governance – being asked repeatedly for comments on the ongoing development of a new university mental health strategy and suicide prevention – had generated several close-to-infinite pain spikes for me in governing body meetings. Whilst I appreciated the fact that the college offered a leaving party I minimised the risk of generating any further mental pain spikes in the leaving process which is why there was no college leaving party. The college may had made some errors in my case but it was willing to correct any errors it made, it continuously responded to the situation and it did whatever it was possible for it to do in that situation to support me.
All effective actions in the case were continuously blocked by those in senior operational roles in the university who between them did not offer one meeting to full college fellow put and left in that situation by the university. Registrary – no meeting, Head of Legal – no meeting, Head of HR – no meeting, Director of Health and Safety – no meeting, Academic secretary – no meeting. If I was not a full college fellow then those in senior operational roles could place some blame on Council and on the VC as in that case they might have needed get approval from the VC and council to interact with a member of the university on university governance concerns.
The fact Is that I was a full college fellow which means I had the relevant higher education and university-specific governance experience and training to independently raise concerns. I had a decade of governance experience and training with regular attendance of governing body meetings and training including charity trustee training developed and regularly updated by the Charity commission. This was sufficient governance training and experience to independently raise the types of governance concerns that I was raising in the university. My specialist academic area was the physical constraints of the mind so work-related stress – physical constraints on mental response to work-related increases in demand for mental power – was a particular area of interest in addition to the physical mechanism of action of mental health medicines. I was working on the physics of medicine – at many different levels – in the physics department when I was struck down by this prolonged series of organisational employment errors that brought that work to a halt.
I was raising university governance concerns : subtype health and safety concerns : subsubtype university operational risk concerns : subsubsubtype grievance and concerns processes need to be updated in order to ensure compliance with a new health and safety legal obligation to regulate work-related stress. These were concerns relating to ongoing work of those in senior operational roles in the university – their operational duties, their operational job roles, their specific activities for the university, their responsibilities for the university – who should then have been organising meetings with me to discuss the health and safety concerns that I was raising.
Instead the response was deny there is any organisational problem, wait until a legal advisor gets in contact to offer any rational organisational response or any form of remedy, block the employment, block the research. The response was to push the person working on work-related stress and raising health and safety concerns relating to work-related stress regulation out of the organisation. I think it likely that had the case ended up in the courts the organisational precedent set in the Catherine MacKenzie case would have been followed – clogging the courts up with more useless processes that have no prospect of delivering an effective remedy because they are being driven by people who are currently in a state of having no interest in fixing any organisational problem and/or delivering an effective remedy in any case and unwilling to change.
It was the same strategy in the cases of other whistleblowers in the university. If those in senior operational roles think that they deploy this strategy in my case and then turn around and blame it all on council and/or on the VC then they should ask themselves what useful outcome are they hoping to achieve for the university by continuing that approach to this situation. Be fair and reasonable and that will be reciprocated by others but generate any more useless processes and it will inevitably result in those in senior operational roles being put through their own grievance, concerns and whistleblowing processes as they stand. A journey of process discovery to generate the key insight that a grievance, concerns of whistleblowing process where no one listens or responds to you has a low probability of delivering any outcome of any use to anyone.
I no longer care about having an academic career or permanent academic post because caring about this reduced my overall standard of living and quality of life whilst also not improving the quality of my academic work. Academics are forced to cycle through universities to build an academic career. It only takes one person or one organisation not caring about whether you get a permanent academic post irrespective of your academic merits, academic capability or suitability for a permanent academic post to put an end to your academic career. That academic dream that you worked your whole life towards will immediately start to evaporate as it is continuously boiled by HR staff in a series of useless grievance and/or concerns processes over many years – sometimes more than a decade – sufficient time for your academic dream to evaporate completely. I am not raising concerns to have a parboiled academic dream fully boiled by an organisation until it evaporates completely. I am raising concerns in this situation to comply with a legal obligation to an organisation.
HR processes with human rights values embedded in them run by people who embody human rights values are more efficient. It’s more difficult to get to that state but it’s then more efficient to run in that state.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 14:43
This conclusion on human rights might seem surprising at first but I think it does make sense. Human rights emerge and develop in response to war and postwar states which are inefficient states to run in relative to peacetime states. Parents raise their child to do the right thing for two decades and within 24hrs of the emergence of war state their unarmed civilian child is dead. Their unarmed civilian child has just been killed by a serial murderer newly released from prison to kill others who after buying freedom through war will go back to the country. They are then free to kill others in their own country – something they have already done – only now after more specialist military training they will be even more lethal and pose even more of a risk to others in their own country than they did before.
Their unarmed child has not been killed by a soldier because a soldier would continuously risk assess a situation and refrain from killing or unnecessarily harming any unarmed civilian to maintain a laser focus on legitimate armed targets that pose a reciprocal threat to the life of the soldier. Their unarmed child was killed by a serial murderer who kills anyone who gets in their way – including soldiers fighting on the same side as them – to minimise the risk to their own life with no concern for the lives of others to maximise their probability of surviving the war and getting back to state of being free in their own country. Then they are free do the exactly what they want in their own country with no concern for the lives of others. Another set of parents is grieving for a child they raised to do the right thing for two decades. Their child was taken to become a soldier within 24 hrs of the emergence of a war state before being murdered by a serial murderer that their own country let out of prison and sent to the frontline to generate a continuous additional risk to life for all its own soldiers.
So they buy their freedom through war and return to their own country : One day it’s a hospital emergency staff not prioritising them, next day a shop worker they didn’t like the look of, train delayed and the driver is never going home to their family again, homeless person blocking a doorway, teenager got too mouthy, toddler wouldn’t stop crying, a car mechanic who is saying to them that a car part was more expensive than expected gets beaten to death with a shovel. Everyone thinks they are a soldier and that this is what soldiers do but they are not a soldier and this is not what soldiers do. War states and post war states are not efficient states for any society to run in.
Every now and then a miracle happens in a war, a serial murderer meets a soldier with exceptional leadership skills, an exceptional military leader and catches a glimpse of what it means to have real power. They see a person with all their own strengths coupled with none of their own weaknesses. They see someone who has an even stronger will to live than they have and who is even more capable of protecting their own life than they are, someone who could find a way to protect the life of a serial murderer whilst also protecting the lives of all others in a war situation. They see an example of a person they could follow that would increase their overall strength and power. They see the error of their ways. An event, a fleeting moment, a unique chance to change, short, time-limited, generated out there on the battlefield in the midst of all that unnecessary killing after which all the lives impacted could go in any direction.
Eileen Nugent · 11 December 2025 at 22:58
A war state is an inefficient societal state which wastes societal resources. A pair of societies continuously places pairs of soldiers in reciprocal risk situations where the only option each soldier then has to minimise the risk to their own life is to maximise the risk to the life of the other soldier. A war process delivers no useful outcome for either society & it delivers no outcome that could not have been achieved by the same pair of societies working together in a state of peace.
Eileen Nugent · 12 December 2025 at 09:44
Newly orphaned kids continuously being left to die of the cancers that have been generated by the products of ever increasing numbers of explosive events as the health system creeks under the ever increasing workload of attending to the maimed who are continuously being brought from the frontline as the health system itself evolves to a more disorganised state due to the continuous loss of specialist medical staff at a higher rate than they can be replaced. A war state is an inefficient societal state and it takes generations to get back to a comparable peace state to the one a society was in before it entered a war state.
SPARTACUS · 12 December 2025 at 14:58
UCam is at war with itself: oligarchy against faculty and students! Rotten, hopeless and in decline.