The Cardiff UCU Branch Executive Committee has made a decision to withdraw from any further participation in the University’s re-application for the Corporate Health Standard Gold award because it does not believe that there has been sufficient progress on the substantive issues of workload stress and bullying. On the contrary, UCU believes that these very serious threats to the health and safety of University staff will worsen as a consequence of the intended reduction in staff numbers from the current Voluntary Severance Scheme and the recent threat of compulsory redundancies.

From UCU’s conversation with Ava Fine, who leads the assessment process, we understand that Cardiff University is likely still to be awarded the Gold Standard due to the prescriptive nature of the process but that recommendations based on our feedback will be included in their report.