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DUCU is raising funds for a Judicial Review of the governance decisions that led the University Court to approve compulsory redundancies.
The members of the Dundee branch of the University and Colleges Union (DUCU) seek your support for a Judicial Review of the governance decisions that led the Court of the University of Dundee (UoD) (the primary governing body) to approve staff cuts through compulsory redundancies on 8 Sep 2026. This egregious decision will bring the total number of staff lost to more than 1000 since the start of UoD's financial crisis in Oct 2024, with irreversible damage caused to the University, the city of Dundee, and the wider Tayside region.
We will be fundraising in stages. The first stage is to fundraise £2000 to obtain an advisory opinion from a practising lawyer.
The University of Dundee governance crisis
In November 2024 the University of Dundee was plunged into a period of financial turmoil through a mix of governance failures, missing oversight and managerial hubris. To date, staff, students and the Dundee community suffer from this failure through no fault of their own, yet, without any legal or financial consequences for the people responsible for the failure. Both former principals implicated in this failure left the university with more than £150k payouts.
In summer 2025 a new interim management team was formed to lead the University out of the financial crisis and address the failings laid out in the report of the officially commissioned investigation ("Gillies report"). It soon became clear that the strategy of this leadership, currently still in place, was to achieve financial stability through drastic wide-ranging staff cuts instead of a considerate mid-term growth strategy. The extensive cuts planned were first laid out in the University Recovery Plan (URP) and later the Strategy to Recovery (StR). Two voluntary severance schemes (Aug 2025, Mar 2026), a recruitment freeze for two years and staff resignations has resulted in a loss of more than 800 staff by summer 2026. Staff remaining at the institution to this date have been left in significantly worse physical and mental health with little meaningful support, swamped with unsustainable workloads, and in a general state of despair about their livelihoods and the future of their institution.
Despite this situation, the University Executive Group has not stopped to consider the impact of the devastating cuts on staff and students. Instead it has continued implementing the final piece of the StR, a redundancy process that put another 500 staff at risk. These cuts include compulsory redundancies, with the express goal to force another 187 staff to leave "voluntarily", bringing the total number of staff lost, if completed, to more than 1000.
Neither the University management nor University Court (its main governing body) have considered the viable alternatives presented to University management by staff and campus unions to this unrelenting programme of job cuts. Court admin refused to table a paper by a member of Court that showed that the next round of cuts were not needed as the University had already lost enough staff to meet the staffing targets identified in the StR.
Instead, University Court approved the plan for further job cuts on 8 Sep 2026 and essentially gave the University management a blank cheque to undertake compulsory redundancies to achieve job cuts well over and beyond the numbers presented to external stakeholders.
Why should this matter to you?
Our current situation is emblematic of a national power grab by business and the University of Dundee's situation is a test case for the (lack of) oversight and effectiveness of governmental bodies.
The Scottish Government has provided the University of Dundee financial support in the form of £62m of tax payer money, administered via the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). The release of these funds is tied to clear conditions of funding, for example, that it will not be used to pay for redundancies and that there will be meaningful and transparent engagement with staff to develop a medium-term plan for the sustainability of the University. However, the development of the StR is in blatant breach of these conditions, as evidenced in detail by the Dundee UCU campus union. The legally mandated collective consultation process on redundancies was riddled with failures. However, the Scottish Government and the SFC continue to refuse to enforce their conditions of funding.
If this new business model is pushed through at the University of Dundee, because of internal governance failures, and publicly funded oversight bodies like the SFC are exposed as being ineffective, higher education institutions everywhere in Scotland, and the rest of the UK are not safe.
Dundee UCU seeks a judicial review on Court's decision on the Strategy to Recovery, the consultations that have led to this vote, and at which point alternatives have been considered, and if not why so?
We urge staff and students of the University, alumni and former employees, every member of the wider Dundee community, every trade union member, and frankly anyone who cares about a functioning Higher Education system that puts academic freedom before business interests to help us cover the costs for this review. We hope that the review will help us hold the University management to account by critically reshaping the governance of our institution for the future into a transparent, democratic process with the interests of staff, students and Dundee at its heart. The review will crucially signal to other Universities that there is a line in the governance and accountability of higher education that cannot and should not be crossed by university management and governors.
Note that any funds raised that go beyond covering the costs of the Judicial Review will be transferred to the student hardship fund of the University of Dundee and the student pantry of the Dundee University Student Association.
URL: sites.dundee.ac.uk/ducu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dundee-ucu/
Bluesky: ducuuo.bsky.social
This project raises funds for a legal dispute. Neither Crowdfunder nor the project owner can guarantee its outcome, that it will be resolved, or that the amount raised will be enough to see it through. Even a favourable result may be appealed or overturned.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 22nd October 2026 at 1:48pm