Despite calls to improve transparency around senior pay at universities, four-fifths of institutions (81%) still allowed their vice-chancellor to attend meetings where their pay was set last year, and only a third (32%) provided full minutes of the meeting, according to UCU research on VC’s.

Cardiff Uni boss Colin Riordan, while not a member of the local remuneration committee, still attends the body which sets his own considerable pay packet.

Prof Riordan currently got £298,000 in pay and bonuses in 2018, up a whopping £51,000 on the year before. This figure is clearly obscene at a time when we’re facing the loss of 380 jobs over 5 years as part of “Transforming Cardiff”; when staff have lost 20% of the value of their pay since 2009; when precariously-employed colleagues scramble for job security; and when so many of us lost so much in strike deductions last year.

That the VC gets to sit in on the meetings that grant him such princely pay rises is just a further insult to his staff.

The Guardian covered the national story , and the UCU has covered it as well

For info on the Cardiff VC’s pay see p.43 of the latest annual report.