Governance Report

Northumbria UCU have issued a report into governance concerns at Northumbria University

GOVERNANCE UNDER SCRUTINY

An Evidence-Based Review of the Board of Governors

at Northumbria University

Prepared by UCU Northumbria

12 May 2026

This document presents a factual, evidence-based assessment of governance practices at Northumbria University during the academic year 2025–26. It draws on publicly available records, correspondence with the Chair of the Board and staff, published financial statements, and a forensic audit of the university’s governance web pages. All claims are sourced and verifiable.

1. Executive Summary

The recent report from the House of Commons Education Committee, Higher Education and Funding: Threat of Insolvency and International Students (12/5/26, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/52983/documents/295982/default/) cites Susan Lapworth, Chief Executive of the Office for Students, who “acknowledged the importance of ways of working and the culture within governing bodies to ensure they interrogate leaderships’ plans and do not sign off unrealistic plans”. The report also indicates “concerns that the quality of governance had contributed to HE institutions facing financial difficulties” and that there is “a need to ensure governing bodies have the capabilities and culture to challenge effectively the assumptions of senior leadership in higher education institutions, including on finances.”

Northumbria UCU have identified seven distinct governance failures relating to these concerns at Northumbria University during the 2025–26 academic year, a period in which the university has been engaged in its most significant employment dispute in recent history: the proposed migration of academic staff from the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme (TPS) to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), accompanied by a threat to freeze pay and to leave national collective bargaining (a dispute referred to in the Commons report). In the terms of the Commons report, these failures relate to the university’s governing body’s failure to “interrogate” and “challenge” the “assumptions” of senior leadership.

On 6 May 2026, a quorate UCU branch meeting voted unanimously for a motion of no confidence in the Board of Governors and called for the resignation of the Chair, Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods.

The findings below go further than departures from sector best practice. They are, in many cases, departures from Northumbria’s own published constitutional documents — the Instrument of Government and Articles of Government effective from 1 August 2025, the Scheme of Delegated Authority approved by the Board on 30 June 2025, and the institution’s own Disclosure and Management of Conflicts of Interest Policy. Northumbria is not being held in this review to extrinsic standards: it is being held to the standards it has set for itself.

No recorded Board vote on the pension decision. The published Board minutes record that proposals on “Managing Academic Pension Costs in a Fair and Sustainable Way” were approved at the meeting of 13 October 2025, but no formal vote was taken. The Board Secretary initially confirmed the Chair personally decided a vote “wasn’t considered appropriate for this item,” and subsequently stated that “the University’s Board of Governors does not conduct its business via a voting system.” Article 6.6 of the Articles of Government, however, provides that decisions on which consensus cannot be reached shall be decided by simple majority, with a 66% supermajority required for decisions of material consequence; the Scheme of Delegated Authority expressly reserves “Approval of the Pensions Policy” and “Approval of Employee Terms and Conditions – material changes” to the Board, with People Committee endorsement. The Board’s own Statement of Primary Responsibilities also identifies the determination of a framework for staff pay and conditions as a reserved matter.
Refusal to communicate or engage. The Chair responded to the UCU Branch Chair’s letter in December 2025, but then refused to allow her position to be communicated to staff, denied having “shared a statement,” and refused further dialogue. This is not an appropriate way to engage with the recognised trade union representing the majority of academic staff when they raise legitimate concerns about a reserved matter.
Active prevention of union–governor contact. In January 2026, the Board Secretary refused to pass UCU’s questions to academic staff governors and instructed the Branch Chair to direct all correspondence to management, warning he would “not receive a response from myself.” In March 2026, a senior university manager instructed the Branch Chair to “desist from making any further contact” with governors. The executive apparatus has been deployed systematically to prevent the recognised trade union from communicating governance concerns to the governors whose role is to provide independent oversight, and challenge university leaders.
A 2026 publication blackout across all committees. As of 1 May 2026, not a single agenda or set of minutes from any 2026 meeting has been published for any of the Board’s five active committees. The most recent published meeting ranges from 155 days ago (Board of Governors) to 319 days ago (People Committee). This is unprecedented in the university’s published record going back to 2019.
Board composition raises oversight questions. The Chair of the Finance and Resources Committee was previously Chief Executive of UCEA, the national employers’ bargaining body. The Board Chair is a former MP married to a former Vice-Chancellor. No governor has trade union experience. In 2022, the Board replaced the election of academic staff governors with selection by the Board itself, weakening staff voice at the governance level before the pension dispute began.
Financial oversight anomalies. Governor expenses were recorded as £0 in the 2024/25 financial statements, despite a Board of approximately 20 members meeting in person multiple times during the year. The £11 million “structural disadvantage” figure that underpinned the executive’s entire pension case has collapsed following changes to TPS employer contribution rates, with no evidence of Board scrutiny of the revised position; Article 5.2.6 of the Articles of Government reserves approval of revised financial forecasts to the Board, non-delegably.
The Register of Interests does not reflect significant interests. The institution’s own Disclosure and Management of Conflicts of Interest Policy (GS0005) requires governors to disclose academic, external-work, and broadly-defined “perception of interference” interests. The Chair’s Northumbria biography publicly describes her as a Visiting Professor at the institution; no such relationship appears on the April 2026 Register of Interests, and no Board authorisation under Article 8.2 of the Instrument of Government — which is required for any benefit conferred on a Board member — is recorded in the public minutes. The Vice-Chancellor, who is the OfS Accountable Officer and a senior member of the executive making the case for the pension proposals, took up a UCEA Board seat on 1 October 2025, twelve days before the Board considered those proposals; the dual role is declared on the Register, but there is no published evidence of Article 6.2 recusal from any related Board discussion.

These failures are not isolated incidents. Together they describe a Board that approved without a recorded vote a major employment decision (with implications for the livelihood of staff now and in future, their students, and our region), refuses to let its position be communicated to staff, has actively instructed the executive to prevent union–governor communication, went silent on the publication of its own records for the entire year of the dispute, operates a Register of Interests narrower than its own conflicts policy requires, and has weakened the mechanisms through which staff voice reaches the boardroom.

Democratic deficits create dysfunctional institutions. To address this, UCU maintain that the Board of Governors not only requires more staff representation, but also trade union representation (at least 4 members from each recognised trade union), as a first step along the path to reviving governance structures to ensure they are more accountable, transparent, and responsive.

2. Introduction

The Board of Governors is the supreme governing body of Northumbria University. As a Higher Education Corporation established under the Education Reform Act 1988, the Board carries legal responsibility for the institution’s strategic direction, financial sustainability, and the framework within which staff are employed. Board members are also charity trustees, subject to the duties of that role under the Charities Act.

This document examines how the Board has exercised those responsibilities during the academic year 2025–26, with particular reference to the proposed changes to staff pay and pension arrangements. It does not seek to relitigate the merits of the pension proposals themselves; those arguments are well documented elsewhere (https://www.ucu-unn.org.uk/news/319-ucu-cp). Instead, it asks whether the governance processes surrounding that decision meet the standards the Board has set for itself — and those set for it by the Office for Students, the CUC Higher Education Code of Governance, and charity law.

The evidence base comprises: (i) publicly available minutes and agendas on the university’s governance web pages, captured in a forensic snapshot on 1 May 2026 with SHA-256 hashes and Internet Archive Wayback Machine attestation; (ii) correspondence between the UCU Branch Chair and the Chair of the Board of Governors; (iii) correspondence between the UCU Branch Chair and the Board Secretary; (iv) published financial statements; (v) publicly available governor biographies; and (vi) responses to Freedom of Information requests.

3. The Board’s Decision on Pay and Pensions

In her letter of 4 December 2025, the Chair of the Board of Governors, Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods, confirmed that the Board had approved proposals on “Managing Academic Pension Costs in a Fair and Sustainable Way” at its meeting of 13 October 2025. The Chair described this as a “total reward approach” offering colleagues a “choice between two excellent pension schemes.”

3.1 The question of a formal vote

The published minutes of the Board meeting of 13 October 2025 record only that “The Board approved proposals on Managing Academic Pension Costs in a Fair and Sustainable Way and commended the report” (BG25/05). No formal vote was taken. The Board Secretary confirmed in writing on 13 January 2026 that “There was no vote and the minute reflects the outcome of the discussion,” and on 15 January 2026 that “Whether an item requires a vote at the Board is determined by the Chair and this wasn’t considered appropriate for this item.” When asked the same question about a subsequent Board meeting on 20 April 2026 — at which the Board received an update on cost management including voluntary severance — the Board Secretary went further, stating on 7 May 2026: “the University’s Board of Governors does not conduct its business via a voting system.” The position has thus escalated from “a vote was not appropriate for this item” to “the Board does not vote at all.” The full minutes of the October 2025 meeting have been withheld under section 36 of the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request dated 16 December 2025 (ref. FOI/RFI-4486).

This position is difficult to reconcile with the institution’s own constitutional documents. The Articles of Government of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle — made under section 125 of the Education Reform Act 1988, approved by the Board on 30 June 2025, and effective from 1 August 2025 — provide at Article 6.6 that “Decisions required at a meeting of the Board of Governors where consensus cannot be achieved shall be decided by a simple majority of the members of the Board of Governors in attendance at such meeting.” The same Article continues: “Where such a decision would, in the opinion of the Chair of Board advised by the Secretary or in the opinion of the Senior Independent Governor, have material constitutional implications, be irrevocable or would require notification to the Primary Regulator, it shall require the agreement of at least 66% of the members of the Board of Governors in attendance.” Voting is, therefore, the constitutional default mechanism for Board decisions where consensus cannot be reached; for decisions of material consequence the Articles impose a supermajority threshold. The Board Secretary’s statement that “the University’s Board of Governors does not conduct its business via a voting system” is not compatible with this provision of the Articles.

The Board’s Scheme of Delegated Authority (SoDA, approved on 30 June 2025 and effective from 1 August 2025) makes the reservation of the pension decision still clearer. Under section 5 of the SoDA (Employment and Staffing), the Board of Governors is the named approving authority for “Approval of the Pensions Policy,” with endorsement by the People Committee. The same section also makes the Board the approving authority for “Approval of Employee Terms and Conditions – material changes,” again with People Committee endorsement. The proposed migration of academic staff from TPS to USS, accompanied by a pay freeze for staff who do not migrate, falls within both categories: it is, on the face of the SoDA, a Board-reserved decision requiring People Committee endorsement. The People Committee — whose last published meeting was on 16 June 2025, four months before the October 2025 Board meeting at which approval is said to have been given — has published nothing for the entire academic year 2025–26. Whether the People Committee provided the required endorsement, and on what basis, is not visible in the public record.

The Board’s own Statement of Primary Responsibilities, published in its annual financial statements, identifies the following as Board-level responsibilities:

“Setting a framework for the pay and conditions of staff other than the Vice-Chancellor, Secretary to the Board of Governors and holders of senior posts.”

A decision to alter the pension arrangements available to academic staff, to freeze the pay of those who do not migrate pension schemes, and to leave national collective bargaining in order to implement these changes, is, on its face, a decision that falls within the Board’s reserved responsibility for the framework of pay and conditions, within the Scheme of Delegated Authority’s express Board-reserved approvals for the Pensions Policy and for material changes to terms and conditions, and — by virtue of its material consequences for the institution’s relationship with the sector bargaining framework and for the terms of employment of academic staff — within the scope of Article 6.6’s 66% supermajority threshold. If the Board approved the proposal by consensus rather than by recorded vote, the institution should be able to demonstrate that the consensus was unanimous; if it cannot, the Articles required a vote. The position that the Board “does not conduct its business via a voting system” leaves both possibilities unresolved and is, on the documentary record, not consistent with the constitution under which the Board operates.

The Board Secretary confirmed on 13 January 2026 that “the relevant staff declared their interests in the matter,” but declined to say which governors recused themselves, how individual governors participated in the discussion, or whether any governor voted against or dissented. When the UCU Branch Chair asked the Board Secretary to share specific questions with the two academic staff governors — including whether they had recused themselves from discussions about pension changes that would directly affect their own pay — the Board Secretary replied on 15 January 2026: “I am not prepared to ask the staff governors the questions you’ve posed.” Article 6.2 of the Articles of Government provides: “Members of the Board of Governors shall declare any relevant interest at the start of each meeting and shall not participate in any decision in which they or a family member have a pecuniary or other conflict of interest.” Section 4.3 of this review examines the operation of Article 6.2 in this dispute in more detail. The combination of a decision taken without a recorded vote, interests declared but not transparently recorded, the absence of any visible Article 6.2 recusal mechanism, and a refusal to allow even basic accountability questions to reach the relevant governors raises serious questions about the quality of the Board’s decision-making process — and about whether that process complied with the Articles.

3.2 The collapsing financial case

The executive’s case for the pension changes rested on a claimed “structural disadvantage” of £11 million per year arising from the difference in employer pension contribution rates between TPS and USS. This figure was set out publicly in a piece authored by Jane Embley (Chief People Officer) and Tom Lawson (Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost) and published on HEPI on 7 November 2025 (“The time for change is now: reducing pension costs in post-92 universities”). The same figure was presented to the Board and to staff as the financial imperative driving the proposals.

However, in March 2026, HM Treasury confirmed changes to TPS employer contribution rates that are likely to substantially reduce this gap. The executive itself circulated analysis acknowledging the changed landscape. On the executive’s own updated figures, the residual disadvantage may be a fraction of the original £11 million claim — potentially as low as £4 million, and likely to fall further when final rates are confirmed later in 2026.

The Articles of Government provide at Article 5.2.6 that the Board of Governors “shall not delegate responsibility for … the approval of the University’s financial forecasts, annual budget and the Annual Report and Financial Statements.” The £11 million figure was a material input to the financial forecasts on which the Board’s October 2025 decision rested. A change to that figure by more than half — on the executive’s own analysis — is itself a material change to the financial forecasts. Under Article 5.2.6, only the Board can approve revised forecasts; that responsibility cannot be delegated.

There is no evidence in any published record — minutes, agenda, or summary — that the Board has been asked to revisit either the original decision or the underlying financial forecasts in light of this change. If the Board has scrutinised the revised position, that scrutiny is not visible in the public record; if it has not, the revised financial forecasts have, in effect, been delegated to the executive, contrary to Article 5.2.6.

The Office for Students’ written evidence to the Education Committee, summarised at paragraph 83 of the Committee’s May 2026 report (HC 807), sets a related standard: governing bodies must require of executive financial proposals “contingency planning, stress-testing and the modelling of realistic worst-case scenarios.” The collapse of the £11 million figure within five months of approval suggests that this standard was not met in October 2025; the absence of any visible Board response to that collapse suggests the standard is not being met now.

4. Accountability and Engagement

On 27 November 2025, the UCU Branch Chair wrote to all members of the Board of Governors individually, conveying the concerns of UCU members regarding the proposed pension and pay changes. The letter set out the case against the proposals, reported the unanimous vote of no confidence in the senior leadership at a branch meeting on 26 November, and called on governors to “fulfil your duty as a governor” by intervening with senior management.

4.1 The Chair’s response

On 4 December 2025, the Chair of the Board replied. She confirmed the Board’s support for the executive’s approach, referring to the 13 October 2025 Board meeting. She described the proposals as providing staff with a choice. She then stated that she did not wish to engage in further dialogue on the matter, and suggested that UCU focus its energies on negotiations with university management.

4.2 Refusal to allow communication

On 15 December 2025, the Branch Chair wrote back, noting that UCU was mandated by its members to communicate the Board’s position. He posed three options: (a) allow the Chair’s statement to be shared; (b) provide an alternative statement for sharing; or (c) if neither, UCU would inform members that the Chair had communicated a position she did not wish to be shared.

On 6 January 2026, the Chair replied stating: “I have not ‘shared a statement’ with you. I responded in good faith to a question you asked me by email.” She reiterated her refusal to engage further.

This creates an extraordinary situation: the Chair of the Board of Governors communicated the Board’s position on the most consequential employment decision in years, but then refused to allow that position to be communicated to the staff it affects. The Board’s governance framework rests on accountability and transparency; a position that is communicated privately but not accountably undermines both.

4.3 The Board Secretary shuts the door

On 5 January 2026, the UCU Branch Chair wrote to the Board Secretary, asking her to convey two questions to the academic staff governors: whether they had recused themselves from discussions about pay and pensions at Board meetings in 2025, given they would be directly affected by the outcomes; and if they had not recused themselves, whether they had voted in favour of the total reward approach, and if so, why.

On 13 January, the Board Secretary replied confirming that “the relevant staff declared their interests in the matter” but providing no further detail on who recused, who participated, or how the decision was reached. The Branch Chair responded the same day noting that the document link provided was inaccessible, that the Secretary had agreed to share questions with governors, and that UCU would publicise the absence of a Board vote.

The Secretary’s reply on 15 January was unequivocal: “I am not prepared to ask the staff governors the questions you’ve posed, in the same way I wouldn’t ask this of other governors.” She directed all future correspondence to the university’s Chief People Officer and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and warned: “I don’t have anything further to say on this so please don’t ask me again for the same information. Any further correspondence should be directed to Jane and Tom as you will not receive a response from myself.”

This exchange is significant for several reasons. First, the questions UCU asked were not improper. They asked whether governors who are also employees, and who are members of TPS, had complied with the mandatory non-participation rule in Article 6.2 of the Articles of Government, which provides: “Members of the Board of Governors shall declare any relevant interest at the start of each meeting and shall not participate in any decision in which they or a family member have a pecuniary or other conflict of interest.” Article 6.2 is a constitutional provision, not internal guidance; “shall declare” and “shall not participate” are mandatory terms. Staff governors who are TPS members had a clear pecuniary interest in a decision about whether TPS members would face a pay freeze if they declined to switch to USS. Whether they declared that interest, and whether they then participated in the decision, are matters that the Articles require to be on the record. The Board Secretary’s statement that “the relevant staff declared their interests in the matter,” coupled with her refusal to say which staff, in what terms, or to what effect, falls short of what Article 6.2 requires to be demonstrable.

Second, the Board Secretary is the officer responsible under the Articles for ensuring governors are informed and accountable; a refusal to pass questions to governors undermines the Secretary’s own governance function. Third, the instruction to stop contacting the Board Secretary and to direct correspondence exclusively to senior management establishes a pattern that would be replicated, more forcefully, two months later with the “desist” instruction documented in section 4.6 below.

4.4 The petition

On 14 January 2026, the Branch Chair notified the Vice-Chancellor and the Chair of the Board that over 1,000 people had signed a petition calling on university management to halt plans to freeze pay. There is no published evidence that the Board responded to or considered this petition.

4.5 The silence since

The Chair’s only identified staff-facing communication during her tenure is a brief address published on the university intranet in January 2024 — over two years ago, and well before the pension dispute. In that address, she praised staff for their “amazing hard work” and expressed the Board’s desire to “support staff and enhance student experience.” No comparable communication has been issued since the dispute began.

4.6 “Please desist from making any further contact”

On 4 March 2026, the UCU Branch Chair wrote to the Students’ Union representatives, staff governors, and other Board members to share messages of support for UCU from Northumbria students — publicly available links to student voices on the pension dispute. The email was collegial in tone and invited recipients’ thoughts.

Later the same day, the Chief People Officer replied on behalf of the Chair of the Board. The response stated:

“Roberta, as Chair of the Board, has been clear on a number of occasions that any communications from you, on behalf of UCU, to the University need to be sent to Tom and me, and no one else. Please don’t expect to hear back from anyone you have emailed as a Board member and please desist from making any further contact.”

This instruction raises fundamental governance concerns, and represents an escalation of the pattern established two months earlier when the Board Secretary refused to pass questions to staff governors and directed all future correspondence to management (see section 4.3). The Board of Governors exists to provide independent oversight of the executive. Individual governors — including the Senior Independent Governor, the staff governors, and the student governors — have a duty to be informed about the concerns of the university community. An instruction channelled through the executive apparatus that prevents the recognised trade union from communicating directly with governors is an instruction that places the executive between the Board and the people the Board is supposed to oversee on behalf of.

It is especially notable that the communication that prompted this instruction was not a demand, a grievance, or a threat — it was links to publicly available statements of student support. The response was not to engage with those students’ concerns but to shut down the channel entirely.

4.7 Subsequent contact

As of 1 May 2026, the Branch Chair reports that he appears to have been blocked from contacting governors directly by email. No staff governor has communicated with UCU at any point during the pension dispute. The combined effect of the “desist” instruction, the absence of any staff-governor communication, and the apparent blocking of direct email contact is that the recognised trade union has no functioning channel to the governing body of the institution on whose staff its members serve.

4.8 Vote of no confidence in the Board of Governors

On 6 May 2026, a UCU Northumbria branch meeting voted unanimously for a motion of no confidence in the Board of Governors and called for the resignation of the Chair, Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods. This is the second unanimous vote of no confidence passed by the branch during the dispute — the first, on 26 November 2025, was directed at the senior leadership team. That this second motion targets the Board of Governors itself reflects the cumulative weight of the governance failures documented in this review: the absence of a recorded vote on the pension decision, the refusal to engage with or be accountable to the recognised trade union, the active suppression of union–governor communication, the unprecedented publication blackout, and the weakening of staff representation at Board level. The branch’s position is that the Board, under its current Chair, has failed in its duty of independent oversight and has instead functioned as an instrument of the executive.

5. Transparency: The 2026 Publication Blackout

On 1 May 2026, a forensic audit was conducted of all six committee pages on the university’s governance website. Every published agenda and set of summary minutes was downloaded, hashed (SHA-256), and independently archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The full archive, including 230 PDFs and 6 HTML index pages, is available for verification.

The findings are as follows:

Committee	Last Published Meeting	Days Elapsed	Historical Norm
Board of Governors	27 Nov 2025	155	5–6 per year
Audit Committee	17 Nov 2025	165	4 per year
Finance and Resources	11 Nov 2025	171	5 per year
Strategic Performance	24 Sep 2025	219	4 per year
People Committee	16 Jun 2025	319	3+ per year

Table 1: Most recent published meeting per committee, as of 1 May 2026. The Employment and Finance Committee was dissolved in July 2024; its remit was split between the Finance and Resources Committee (financial matters) and the People Committee (employment matters).

Across all five active committees, there is not one single 2026 document — neither agenda nor minutes — on the published record. This is unprecedented: every academic year since 2019–20 shows all committees with February or March meeting records published by this point in the calendar. The blackout is not because meetings have stopped taking place: the Board Secretary confirmed on 7 May 2026 that the Board met on 20 April 2026 and received an update on cost management and voluntary severance, yet no agenda or minutes from that meeting appear in the published record.

5.1 The People Committee

The People Committee warrants particular attention. When the Employment and Finance Committee was dissolved in July 2024, its employment remit — including oversight of staff terms and conditions — transferred to the People Committee. This is therefore the committee with formal oversight of pension and pay decisions. Its last published meeting was 16 June 2025: 319 days ago, and before any of the disputed pension proposals were tabled with staff. The committee has published nothing for the entire duration of the pension dispute.

5.2 The Audit Committee

The Audit Committee shows a further anomaly: for both its 15 September 2025 and 2 June 2025 meetings, only agendas have been published — no summary minutes. For every prior Audit Committee meeting going back to 2019, both documents are published. This suggests that even where recent meetings have occurred, the minutes are being withheld.

5.3 Possible explanations

Summary minutes are typically confirmed at the next meeting of each committee, which introduces a normal lag of several weeks. However, this does not explain the absence of agendas for any 2026 meeting (agendas are produced before meetings, not after), nor does it explain a gap of five to ten months across all committees simultaneously. The pattern is consistent with either a systematic publication failure or a deliberate decision to withhold records during the dispute period.

6. Who Governs? Board Composition and Oversight

The Board comprises up to 22 individuals: 13 external (independent) governors, up to 3 co-opted governors, the Vice-Chancellor, 2 staff representatives, 1 Academic Board representative, and 2 student representatives. The following observations are based on the governors’ published biographies on the university’s website.

6.1 The Chair of the Finance and Resources Committee

Helen Fairfoul OBE chairs the Finance and Resources Committee. From 2012 to 2020, she was Chief Executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) — the national body that represents university employers in collective bargaining negotiations with trade unions, including UCU. Her university biography notes that she “contributed at a sector-level on employment and employee relations” and worked “extensively with trade union representatives.”

The Finance and Resources Committee is the body that scrutinises the financial case for the pension changes. Its Chair spent eight years leading the national employers’ side of the bargaining machinery that Northumbria is now proposing to leave. This does not constitute a conflict of interest in the strict legal sense, but it raises legitimate questions about the independence of the Committee’s scrutiny of a proposal that directly affects the employers’-side bargaining position she spent her career advancing.

6.2 The Chair of the Board

Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods has been Chair since 1 August 2020. She is a former Labour MP for the City of Durham (2005–2019), former Deputy Minister in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, a former Northumbria University academic (Professor of Social Policy, Head of School, and Associate Dean in the School of Arts and Social Sciences, ending in May 2005), and a former Dean of Social and Labour Studies at Ruskin College, Oxford. She is married to Professor Tim Blackman, who served as Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University (2015–2019) and Vice-Chancellor of the Open University (2019–2024). She is also a Trustee and Board Member of the Committee of University Chairs (CUC), the sector body whose Higher Education Code of Governance the Board has subscribed to and which is examined in section 7.2 of this review.

Dr Blackman-Woods sits on five of the Board’s six committees: Finance and Resources, Nominations (Chair), People, Remuneration, and Strategic Performance. This concentration of committee membership, combined with her deep personal connections to the HE sector and to senior university leadership, raises questions about the distance between the Chair and the executive decisions she is responsible for scrutinising.

A further question concerns the process by which the Chair was appointed. The appointment was announced on 17 December 2019, ten weeks after she had stood down as MP for the City of Durham; she took up the role on 1 August 2020. In October 2020, two months after she assumed the Northumbria role, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards upheld two complaints of bullying that had been brought against her under the Parliamentary Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS) by two of her then-staff. This is reported by Esther Walker in The Times of 3 April 2021 (“Bully case against MP ‘shows flaws in system’,” p. 24). The Commissioner recommended that no sanctions be applied; some other complaints brought by the same staff were dismissed. The Times further reports that the Labour Party had been made aware of “problems with her behaviour in 2018,” more than a year before the Northumbria Chair appointment was announced. Her stated response to The Times was that there “were strong medical grounds for what happened.”

This review takes no position on that medical-grounds defence; that is properly a matter between the individual concerned and the relevant authorities. The institutional question is different. The Northumbria Chair appointment was announced in December 2019, more than a year after the Labour Party’s 2018 awareness of the conduct that gave rise to the ICGS complaints; the appointment was taken up in August 2020, while the ICGS inquiry was still active; and the Commissioner’s findings against her were issued in October 2020, after the Northumbria role had begun. Whether the Nominations Committee that conducted the appointment process was informed of the active ICGS inquiry, what enquiries it made about the conduct that gave rise to it, and whether the matter was disclosed for the purposes of the Board’s subsequent due diligence on the appointment, are questions to which the public record provides no answer. Under the Nolan Principles to which Article 4.5 of the Instrument of Government commits all members of the Board, an active disciplinary or grievance investigation in another public-office role would normally be expected to have been disclosed at appointment and recorded subsequently on the Register of Interests. No such disclosure appears on the Register of Interests as at April 2026.

6.3 The Senior Independent Governor

Peter Judge MBE has served as Senior Independent Governor since January 2020. He chairs both the Remuneration Committee and the People Committee — the committee responsible for staff terms and conditions, and the committee that has published no meeting records for 319 days. The SIG role exists specifically as a route for raising concerns when normal channels of communication with the Chair are not producing resolution.

6.4 Composition and representation

The independent governors are drawn primarily from public-sector management (NHS, government agencies), HE administration, corporate consultancy, and finance. No governor’s published biography indicates experience of trade union representation, worker advocacy, or staff-side collective bargaining. Two staff governors sit on the Board, but they are outnumbered approximately 15 to 2 by external and executive members.

Three new governors joined in December 2023 (Professor Dame Janet Beer, Alison Fellows, Jan Thompson), replacing three long-standing members. Several current governors were therefore only months into their roles when the Board approved the pension proposals in October 2025.

6.5 From election to selection: weakening staff voice

In May 2022, the Board decided to change how the academic staff governor vacancy would be filled, moving from election by academic colleagues to selection by the Board through an application-based process. The stated aim was to encourage applications from minoritised and under-represented groups. UCU raised a number of concerns in correspondence with the Secretary to the Board and the Chair, including:

That the change represented a significant weakening of democratic representation — a selected governor has no mandate from colleagues, no obligation to consult them, and no accountability to them. That the guidance on being a staff governor already states they are “representative staff members rather than representatives of staff” — and selection makes even that limited representative function harder to fulfil. That diversity could be achieved by increasing the number of academic staff seats (e.g. one per faculty) rather than by replacing election with selection. And that it was inconsistent to have elected student governors and elected professional support staff governors, but only one selected academic governor drawn from over 1,300 staff.

In June 2022, the Chair paused the process and agreed to discuss UCU’s concerns at the Board’s next meeting on 27 June. The process was then resumed and implemented. No staff governor has communicated with UCU at any point during the pension dispute — a silence that is consistent with the structural isolation built into the selection model. When UCU attempted to reach the two academic staff governors through the Board Secretary in January 2026, asking whether they had recused themselves from a decision that directly affected their own pay, the Board Secretary refused to pass the questions on (see section 4.3). Selected rather than elected, the staff governors are accountable neither to their colleagues nor, it appears, to the recognised trade union that represents them.

6.6 Governor expenses

The university’s 2024/25 financial statements record £0 in governor expenses. In 2023/24, the figure was £1,361 across four governors. For a Board of approximately 20 members, including the Chancellor (based outside the North East) and governors from across England and Scotland, meeting in person multiple times during the year, a figure of zero is difficult to explain through ordinary behaviour. Possible explanations include a shift from reimbursement to direct billing (which would not appear as “expenses”) or a policy change, but no explanation has been published.

6.7 The Register of Interests: scope and gaps

The Board of Governors maintains a Register of Interests which is published on the university’s website. As at April 2026, the Register’s column heading reads “Executive or Non-Executive, Trusteeships, Board or Other Appointments.” That scope, on its face, captures current external positions held by governors. The Chair’s entry on the Register reads in full: “City of Durham Trust (Patron); Committee of University Chairs (Trustee and Board Member); Senior Research/Policy Fellow, Palace Yard Cross Party Think Tank.”

The institution’s own published policy on conflicts of interest requires more. The Disclosure and Management of Conflicts of Interest Policy (GS0005, version 1.5, last reviewed September 2024, with next review scheduled for April 2026) provides at paragraph 1.2 that governors have “a responsibility to identify and disclose actual, potential, or perceived conflicts, between their personal, family, pecuniary, academic, or business interests and their professional responsibilities to the University.” Paragraph 2.3.2 sets out fourteen specific categories of disclosable interest, including “External work/consultancy outside the University” and “Personal relationships with work colleagues (past, present, and known applicants).” Paragraph 4.1 defines “interests” broadly as “any activity or association which may interfere, or be perceived to interfere, with an individual’s ability to properly discharge his/her duties to the University,” and explicitly includes among non-financial interests “enhancement of an individual’s career, education or professional reputation; access to privileged information or facilities, personal and family connections or associations which could affect or influence the individual’s University role.”

The Chair’s published Northumbria biography states that she “maintained close links with Northumbria over many years including as a Visiting Professor.” A Visiting Professor relationship with the institution one chairs is, on any natural reading, an “academic” interest within paragraph 1.2 of GS0005, a form of “external work” within paragraph 2.3.2, and a “personal connection or association which could affect or influence the individual’s University role” within paragraph 4.1. It is, additionally, a relationship that confers a benefit on the governor — the title, the institutional affiliation, and any associated privileges of access. The Instrument of Government of the University, at Article 8.2, provides:

“The University may, and may only, confer benefits on members of the Board of Governors if the benefit has been authorised by the Board of Governors in accordance with the Governance Regulations, which must comply with the Charity Commission’s guidelines. In this paragraph, ‘benefit’ includes: (a) buying any goods or services from the University; (b) selling goods, services or any interest in land to the University; (c) being employed by, or receiving any remuneration from the University; (d) receiving any other financial benefit from the University.”

If the Chair’s Visiting Professorship confers any benefit within the scope of Article 8.2, it requires explicit Board authorisation. If it has been so authorised, that authorisation should be documented and the relationship should be recorded on the Register of Interests. As at April 2026, the Register contains no such record. Either the Visiting Professor relationship described in the Chair’s published biography is current and undisclosed, or it has lapsed and the biography is misleading.

The Chair’s prior senior management roles at Northumbria — Professor of Social Policy, Head of School, and Associate Dean in the School of Arts and Social Sciences, all held before her election to Parliament in May 2005 — present a related question. These are, by their nature, “academic” interests under GS0005 paragraph 1.2 and “associations which could affect or influence the individual’s University role” under paragraph 4.1. They are not captured by the Register’s current column heading. They are not declared elsewhere on the Register.

A similar pattern appears in respect of Helen Fairfoul, the Chair of the Finance and Resources Committee. Her published Northumbria biography openly discloses her tenure as Chief Executive of UCEA from 2012 to 2020 (a position discussed in section 6.1 above). That historic senior-sector employment is not on the April 2026 Register of Interests. The omission appears consistent with the Register’s column scope; it is not consistent with what GS0005 paragraph 4.1 requires of governors with substantial prior leadership roles in sector employer or regulatory bodies that bear directly on matters under Board consideration.

What this pattern indicates is a Register of Interests narrower in scope than the institution’s own conflicts policy requires. Academic interests, prior senior-sector employment, and the kinds of “associations that could affect or influence the individual’s University role” that paragraph 4.1 is concerned with are not captured by the published Register. The deficiency, on the documentary record, is at the level of the instrument: it is not the failure of any individual governor to comply, but rather a Register that has been designed not to ask the questions GS0005 requires to be asked.

Section 3 of GS0005 commits the Board to ad hoc disclosure of interests “as a standing item on the agenda of Board and Committee meetings.” The 2026 publication blackout documented in section 5 of this review prevents external scrutiny of whether this standing-item requirement is being observed during the period in which the pension dispute has been under consideration.

6.8 The Vice-Chancellor’s UCEA Board membership

The April 2026 Register of Interests records, for Professor Andy Long (Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of the University, and OfS Accountable Officer): “Royal Academy of Engineering (Fellow); Board Member of UCEA (from 1 Oct 2025).”

UCEA — the Universities and Colleges Employers Association — is the national body which represents university employers in collective bargaining negotiations with the recognised trade unions, including UCU. UCEA is also among the bodies that submitted written evidence to the Education Committee’s recent inquiry on the funding of post-92 institutions (cited at footnote 150 of HC 807), and the body whose institutional position on TPS frames the management case for the Northumbria pivot to USS. The HEPI piece by the Chief People Officer and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (cited in section 3.2 above) sets out that case publicly.

The Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria — the OfS Accountable Officer for the institution, the executive responsible to the Board for implementing the pension proposals, and a senior member of the executive making the management case — took up a UCEA Board seat on 1 October 2025, twelve days before the Board considered those proposals at its meeting of 13 October 2025. He has held that seat throughout the active phase of the dispute. The Register records the appointment; the Board has accepted it.

This is a declared interest. The question is whether its acceptance is consistent with the Board’s duty of independent oversight. Article 6.2 of the Articles of Government requires governors to declare relevant interests and not to participate in decisions in which they have a pecuniary or other conflict of interest. Where the Vice-Chancellor’s executive role at Northumbria and his Board role at UCEA align in their respective institutional positions on TPS reform — as they manifestly do on the public record — Article 6.2’s recusal rule would, on a strict reading, apply to his participation in any Board discussion of TPS/USS migration. There is no published evidence in the Board minutes of any such recusal, nor any published consideration by the Board of whether the dual role required active conflict management beyond declaration. On the documentary record, the matter is unmanaged.

7. Regulatory Framework and Governance Standards

The governance failures documented in this review engage multiple regulatory and professional standards.

7.1 OfS Condition E2: Management and Governance

Condition E2 of the Office for Students’ regulatory framework requires that a provider’s governing body has “adequate and effective management and governance arrangements.” The OfS has stated that governing bodies must provide “independent oversight and effective challenge,” and that a failure to do so may constitute a breach. The absence of published records, the refusal to engage with the recognised trade union, the instruction to “desist” from contacting governors, and the absence of a recorded vote on a major employment decision all raise questions about whether the Board’s oversight has been adequate and effective during this period.

7.2 CUC Higher Education Code of Governance

The CUC Code sets sector-endorsed standards for university governance. Relevant principles include: Principle 3 (the governing body ensures institutional sustainability, including through effective oversight of the institution’s activities); Principle 6 (the governing body must receive and test assurance that the institution is well managed); and Principle 7 (the governing body must ensure transparency and openness in its proceedings). The 2026 publication blackout and the Chair’s refusal to communicate the Board’s position are difficult to reconcile with Principle 7 in particular.

7.3 Charity Commission: Trustee Duties

Board members are charity trustees. The Charity Commission’s guidance (CC3) sets out six trustee duties, including the duty to act in the charity’s best interests (not the interests of the executive), the duty to manage the charity’s resources responsibly, and the duty to act with reasonable care and skill. Trustees are expected to exercise independent judgement and to be accountable for their decisions. The pattern documented in this review — rubber-stamping an executive proposal without a vote, refusing scrutiny of a collapsing financial case, and withdrawing from public accountability — raises questions about whether these duties have been met.

7.4 Parliamentary scrutiny: the Education Committee’s May 2026 report

The House of Commons Education Committee’s Ninth Report of Session 2024–26, Higher Education and Funding: Threat of Insolvency and International Students (HC 807), was published on 12 May 2026. Northumbria University is explicitly named in the body of the report.

At paragraphs 60 and 61, the Committee records: “At Northumbria University staff were offered membership of the USS, but the possibility of pay being frozen if they do not switch from the TPS to the USS has led to a vote on industrial action.” The Committee cites the November 2025 HEPI piece by Embley and Lawson (referenced in section 3.2 of this review) as its source for the comparative contribution figures — £8,300 per annum for USS, £16,500 for TPS, for an academic salary of £57,500.

The framing of this evidence in the Committee’s report is significant. At paragraph 68, in its conclusions on TPS, the Committee notes that the cost differential is “imposing a high cost on providers in the scheme, whilst incentivising them to outsource staffing to wholly owned subsidiary companies as a way to get round the requirement to enrol them in the TPS.” At paragraph 69, the Committee recommends that Government “could prohibit the creation of wholly owned subsidiaries which are being used to avoid the requirement for TPS membership.” The Committee identifies pension-switching, of the kind Northumbria is proposing, as a form of regulatory arbitrage that may warrant parliamentary intervention.

The same report devotes substantial attention to the question of governance. At paragraph 79, drawing on the Augar Review, it describes a sector-wide “dash for growth, which was not very well managed at the governing body level.” At paragraph 80, citing the Gillies Report on the financial difficulties at the University of Dundee, the Committee notes that “cultural context and values in relation to leadership and governance contributed to the financial difficulties.” At paragraph 81, the Committee cites approvingly UCU’s call for “a commission to explore better university governance as part of a wider project to restore democratisation and increased staff participation in central decision making.”

The Committee’s substantive recommendations on governance, at paragraphs 84 to 87, are direct. At paragraph 84, the Committee quotes Susan Lapworth, Chief Executive of the Office for Students, “acknowledg[ing] the importance of ways of working and the culture within governing bodies to ensure they interrogate leaderships’ plans and do not sign off unrealistic plans.” At paragraph 85, in its own voice, the Committee concludes that “governing bodies must have the capabilities and culture to challenge effectively the assumptions of senior leadership in higher education institutions, including on finances, projections of student numbers, and plans for restructuring.” At paragraph 86, the Committee recommends that the OfS develop a governance improvement programme. At paragraph 87, it recommends implementation of the Augar Review’s proposal that elements of senior leadership pay be deferred until after their term of office ends, and indicates that the Committee “may also return to this subject later in the Parliament.”

The substance of the Committee’s findings — the framing of pension-switching as a form of avoidance warranting prohibition, the call for governance interrogation rather than rubber-stamping of executive plans, and the OfS standard on stress-testing — speaks directly to the matters documented in this review. Northumbria is named in the parliamentary record. The governance failures the Committee identifies sector-wide are the failures this review identifies at Northumbria specifically. The remedies the Committee recommends for the sector are the remedies this review seeks for this institution.

7.5 The nature of the remedy: governance, not finance

The remedies to which this review points are governance remedies, not financial ones. The argument here is not that Northumbria requires external financial support, nor that its operations should be curtailed — it is that the Board’s exercise of its functions during the academic year 2025–26 has fallen short of the standards set for it by the Office for Students, by the CUC Code of Governance, by the Charity Commission, and by the Board’s own Statement of Primary Responsibilities. The interventions sought are corrective and procedural: a properly recorded decision-making process; the timely publication of agendas, minutes, and the Register of Interests in line with the institution’s own published commitments; respect for the role of the recognised trade union as a legitimate channel of staff voice; and a Board composition that more fully reflects the workforce on whose behalf the institution operates.

8. Conclusions

Northumbria University is a great institution, and the work of its staff and students deserves governance that matches its ambitions. This review does not question the right of the Board to make difficult decisions. It questions whether the processes by which those decisions were made, communicated, and scrutinised meet the standards the Board has set for itself — and those set for it by regulators, by charity law, and by the expectations of the university community.

This report is offered in the spirit of constructive criticism. Northumbria University is a major regional asset, and the long-term sustainability of that asset rests on effective governance. The failures documented here are not failings of the institution as a whole, nor of the staff and students whose work makes the university what it is — they are failings of a specific governance approach during a specific period, and they are correctable. Documenting those failures is a precondition for correcting them; correcting them is what makes the institution stronger.

The evidence presented here describes failures at every level of the institution’s published governance hierarchy.

At the level of the Instrument of Government, Article 8.2 prohibits the conferral of any benefit on a Board member unless explicitly authorised by the Board. The Chair’s Visiting Professor relationship with the institution she chairs is publicly described in her own Northumbria biography; no authorisation is recorded in the public minutes, and the relationship is not on the April 2026 Register of Interests.

At the level of the Articles of Government, Article 6.6 establishes voting as the constitutional mechanism for non-consensus decisions, with a 66% supermajority threshold for decisions of material consequence; the Board Secretary’s position that “the Board does not conduct its business via a voting system” is incompatible with this provision. Article 6.2 requires mandatory non-participation by governors with pecuniary conflicts; the Board has provided no demonstration that staff governors complied with this rule in respect of decisions about their own pension entitlements, nor that the Vice-Chancellor recused from decisions affecting the UCEA Board’s institutional position. Article 5.2.6 reserves financial-forecast approval to the Board, non-delegably; the collapse of the £11 million figure has produced no visible Board re-approval of revised forecasts.

At the level of the Scheme of Delegated Authority, both “Approval of the Pensions Policy” and “Approval of Employee Terms and Conditions – material changes” are designated Board-reserved approvals with People Committee endorsement; the People Committee has published nothing for the entire academic year 2025–26.

At the level of the Disclosure and Management of Conflicts of Interest Policy (GS0005), the institution requires disclosure of academic, external-work, and broadly-defined “perception of interference” interests; the published Register of Interests is, by its own column heading, narrower than this requires, and significant interests of the Chair and other senior governors are absent from it.

At the level of the operation of the Board itself, the recognised trade union representing the majority of academic staff has been refused engagement on a reserved matter; its questions have not been passed to governors; its members have been instructed to “desist” from contacting governors; and the publication of agendas and minutes across all committees has ceased for the duration of the dispute.

At every level of this hierarchy, the failures are documented in the institution’s own published instruments. The argument is not that Northumbria should be held to standards external to itself — it is that Northumbria should be held to the standards it has set for itself.

This pattern is not consistent with the principles of transparency, accountability, and independent oversight that underpin effective university governance. It is not consistent with the Board’s own Statement of Primary Responsibilities. And it is not consistent with the assurance that the Office for Students, students, staff, and the wider public are entitled to expect from the governing body of a major public institution.

The Board of Governors has an opportunity to address these concerns. On 6 May 2026, UCU Northumbria members voted unanimously that they have no confidence in the Board of Governors and called for the resignation of its Chair. That vote is not the beginning of a dispute — it is the consequence of six months in which every attempt at engagement has been refused, every channel of communication has been shut down, and every request for accountability has been deflected. Staff and their representatives remain ready to engage constructively with any governor who is willing to listen. The question is whether the Board, under its current leadership, and with its current composition, is capable of doing so.

Appendix A: Committee Publication Gaps

The following table summarises the state of published agendas and minutes for all Board committees, as captured on 1 May 2026. The full forensic archive (230 PDFs, 6 HTML pages, SHA-256 manifest, Wayback Machine URLs) is available on request.

For each committee, the table shows: the most recent published meeting date; the number of days elapsed since that meeting; the number of meetings published for AY 2025–26; and the historical average number of meetings per academic year (based on records from 2019–20 to 2024–25).

Committee	Last Published	Days Ago	AY 25–26 Meetings	Hist. Avg/Year	Chair
Board of Governors	27 Nov 2025	155	2 of ~5	5–6	R. Blackman-Woods
Audit	17 Nov 2025	165	2 of ~4	4	H. Thorne
Finance & Resources	11 Nov 2025	171	2 of ~5	5	H. Fairfoul
Strategic Performance	24 Sep 2025	219	1 of ~4	4	S. Fancey
People	16 Jun 2025	319	0 of ~3	3+	P. Judge

Note: The People Committee shows 0 meetings for AY 2025–26 because its only published meetings are from AY 2024–25 (June 2025, March 2025, September 2024). It has published no meeting for the current academic year.

Appendix B: Governor Profiles Summary

The following table summarises the composition of the Board of Governors based on published biographies. External interests and affiliations are as published on the university’s website.

Governor	Joined Board	Background / External Interests	Committees	Other Roles
R. Blackman-Woods (Chair)	Aug 2020	Former Labour MP; former Northumbria academic; married to former VC of Open University/Middlesex	F&R, Nominations (Chair), People, Remuneration, Strat. Perf.	Pro-Chancellor
H. Fairfoul OBE	Mar 2020	Former CEO, UCEA (employers’ bargaining body); former HR Director, Univ. of Roehampton	F&R (Chair), Nominations, People, Remuneration	Pro-Chancellor
P. Judge MBE (SIG)	Jan 2020	Solicitor; Company Secretary, Homes England; Northumbria graduate (Law 1993)	Audit, Nominations, People (Chair), Remuneration (Chair)	Pro-Chancellor
H. Thorne MBE	Jun 2016	HE consultant (Uniac); former Director, UCAS; school governor	Audit (Chair), Nominations	—
S. Fancey	Jan 2020	University Secretary, Strathclyde; former Director, Scottish Funding Council	Strat. Perf. (Chair)	—
H. Kajee (Deputy Chair)	Sep 2022	NHS Business Services Authority; digital programmes lead	People	Pro-Chancellor
B. Bartoli	Sep 2022	Deputy CEO & COO, NHS acute hospital trust	F&R	—
M. Larsen	—	Former Managing Director, Accenture; IT consultancy	F&R	—
I. Wilkin	—	CFO, LCI Real Estate; former Abu Dhabi Investment Authority	Audit	—
A. Fellows	Dec 2023	Corporate solicitor; NED multiple public bodies	Audit	—
Dame J. Beer	Dec 2023	Former VC of Liverpool and Oxford Brookes	—	—
J. Thompson	Dec 2023	Works for The Guardian	Strat. Perf.	—
Prof. A. Long (VC)	2022	Vice-Chancellor; former Provost, Nottingham	F&R, Nominations, People, Strat. Perf.	OfS Accountable Officer

Note: Staff governors (2) and student governors (2) are not listed above. The Board also has a Secretary who is not a governor. Table does not include co-opted committee members.

Appendix C: Chronological Correspondence Trail

The following is a summary of key correspondence between the UCU Branch Chair and the Chair of the Board, the Board Secretary, and the Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria University. Full texts of correspondence originated by UCU are available on request. Correspondence originated by the Chair of the Board is referenced by date, author, and subject only, in accordance with the Chair’s expressed wish that her communications not be shared.

Date	From / To	Subject	Summary
20 May 2022	UCU Branch Chair → Secretary to Board	BoG Changes	Raises concerns about proposed change from election to selection of academic staff governors. Questions democratic deficit, tokenism, and lack of mandate.
9 Jun 2022	Chair of BoG → UCU	Re: BoG Changes	Confirms Board decision to pilot application-based process. Pauses process pending discussion at 27 June Board meeting. Process subsequently resumed.
27 Nov 2025	UCU Branch Chair	Letter to Board of Governors	Written to all governors individually. Sets out concerns about pension and pay proposals, no-confidence vote, indicative ballot results, and calls on governors to intervene.
4 Dec 2025	Chair of BoG → UCU	Re: Pay and Pensions	Confirms Board approved proposals at 13 Oct 2025 meeting. Describes approach as giving “choice.” States she does not wish to engage in further dialogue.
15 Dec 2025	UCU Branch Chair → Chair of BoG	Re: Pay and Pensions	Asks whether the Chair’s position can be communicated to members, or whether an alternative statement will be provided.
6 Jan 2026	Chair of BoG → UCU	Re: Pay and Pensions	States she has not “shared a statement.” Reiterates refusal to engage further.
5 Jan 2026	UCU Branch Chair → Board Secretary	Absences	Asks Board Secretary to convey questions to academic staff governors about recusal and voting on pension decision.
13 Jan 2026	Board Secretary → UCU	Re: Absences	Confirms “there was no vote.” States “the relevant staff declared their interests.” Provides no detail on recusal or participation.
15 Jan 2026	Board Secretary → UCU	RE: Absences	Refuses to pass questions to staff governors. Confirms Chair decided no vote was needed. Directs all future correspondence to Embley/Lawson. Warns: “you will not receive a response from myself.”
14 Jan 2026	UCU Branch Chair → VC and Chair	Petition	Notifies that 1,000+ people have signed a petition calling on management to halt plans to freeze pay.
4 Mar 2026	UCU Branch Chair → SU reps, staff governors, Board members	Student Support	Shares publicly available links to student messages supporting UCU’s position on pay and pensions. Collegial in tone.
4 Mar 2026	Senior university manager → UCU Branch Chair	Re: Student Support	Writes on behalf of Chair of BoG: instructs UCU to send communications only to “Tom and me, and no one else.” States: “please desist from making any further contact.”
5 May 2026	UCU Branch Chair → Board Secretary	BoG	Asks Board Secretary whether a vote was taken at the 20 April Board meeting on compulsory redundancies, and if not, why not.
7 May 2026	Board Secretary → UCU	RE: BoG	States “the University’s Board of Governors does not conduct its business via a voting system.” Confirms Board met 20 April and received update on cost management and voluntary severance. Does not address compulsory redundancies question.
6 May 2026	UCU Northumbria branch meeting	Vote of no confidence	Unanimous vote of no confidence in the Board of Governors and call for the resignation of the Chair, Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods. Second unanimous no-confidence vote of the dispute (first: 26 Nov 2025, directed at senior leadership).

Appendix D: Chair’s Update to Staff, January 2024

The following transcript was published on the Northumbria University staff intranet. It is the only identified staff-facing communication from the Chair of the Board during her tenure.

“Hello everyone and for those of you who don’t know me I am Roberta Blackman-Woods, Chair of Governors at Northumbria. First of all let me wish everyone a very Happy New Year. Last year was another hugely successful year for Northumbria thanks to the amazing hard work of all staff, students and the senior team. Despite financial headwinds and global dynamics that are making life difficult for universities in the UK I am full of optimism for our ongoing success next year as we negotiate the challenges that lie ahead.

We start the year with a strong foundation and vision for the future in our new strategy. The Board approved the new strategy at the end of November, and we are totally committed to the university combining the highest quality research and education alongside a determination to enhance social mobility so that people from all backgrounds can succeed.

[…]

The last few years have produced some really positive milestones for Northumbria […] As a Board we want to build on this success and support prudent management of the budget so that going forward the university can invest in the estate, support staff and enhance student experience and outcomes — we look forward to working alongside you to achieve this.

[…]

Finally, I just want to say an enormous thank you to you on behalf of the Board for being such an amazing group of people, for the incredible work that you do that makes this university the very special place that it is. Thank you.”

— End of document —