As well as proposed staff cuts to Faculty of Life Sciences (FLS) and Modern Languages, UCL is now preparing to wield the axe on The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine (WTCHM).
According to UCL, the Wellcome Trust is pushing the university cut admin staff in their current renegotiations over the the WTCHM's programme grant (being considered for renewal from October 2010). The Wellcome Trust has indicated that the WICHMs bid should be around £4.5m, almost a 50% reduction from the current grant of £8.8m.
A proposal for restructuring was given to WTCHM staff on Friday 19th March. I places 6 out of 13 staff at risk of redundancy, a 46% cut in numbers for support services. Staff have been placed under a great deal of uncertainty since November when they were told that UCL considered the numbers of admin staff to be ‘too high’ for ‘the UCL norm’.
To support this the proposal states that the ratio of academic to support staff for WTCHM is at an ‘unprecedented level of 1:1, but this is misleading: of the 13 support staff listed one, for example, edits an established academic journal. The proposal also seeks to cut the department’s two IT staff and replace them with one Information Officer. However whether their duties will actually cease or will in reality create a new position - either in the Information Services Division or in FLS IT Support — is not mentioned.
These cuts to support staff are only the thin end of the wedge. Even if they create a saving of £253,000 per annum (the most optimistic estimate the proposal gives) this will not be nearly enough: cuts to academic posts must surely follow. UCL professses that their proposals will enable the Centre to run ‘effectively and efficiently’. However if all support staff are currently fully employed, how can it be possible to halve the administrative team without severe consequences, either in the workload heaped on the remaining staff or in a loss of needed services?