We have raised this with University management and they have agreed to take steps to ensure wider implementation of the new policy. It will assist this process, if we can bring failures of implementation to their attention. There are about 100 staff who have been employed on regular and renewable contracts in excess of seven years. Only about a quarter of these have been made permanent so far. The policy does not apply to staff employed on a term time basis, or staff engaged as casual teaching assistants, but separate exercises may be undertaken for these staff.
Work remains to be done on the development of an effective redeployment procedure.
We expect to be consulted on this in the near future. It was also clear from the meeting of fixed term contract staff that implementation of the Concordat for research staff was patchy with some evidence of good practice but also evidence of failure in this respect, especially as regards career development. In the last Newsletter I spent a page explaining why people should take an interest in the changes to Statutes. So persuasive was I that only 33 members turned up to a barely quorate special meeting of Academic Council to consider the changes. Since there was nothing about specific schools, the absence of many Heads of Schools is excusable, although those present contributed to a useful discussion on the roles of Deans and Heads of Schools.