Confirmed: Cardiff University is cutting 380 jobs following a £21m deficit

Cardiff University has announced that up to 380 staff jobs at the uni will be cut over the next five years, putting its lecturers in a vulnerable position. The main reason for this is because of the university’s £21m deficit, which was revealed in December.

In December, Vice-Chancellor, Colin Riordan who is earning £302,000 a year, wrote to all 7,000 university staff, informing them that applications for voluntary redundancy would be open in the new year.

However, it is now evident that compulsory redundancies will take place as a recent email sent to staff has stated that compulsory redundancies could not be ruled out. Despite this, it is hoped that most of the redundancies will take place due to voluntary severance and recruitment controls.

Nonetheless, the university plans to get back into surplus by 2019-2020 and aims to cut staff costs from 59.6 per cent of total income to no more than 56 per cent by 2022-23 in order to achieve this.

As a result, Colin Riordan emailed staff, informing them of the required redundancies, stating: "The university plans to reduce current staff levels by seven per cent, or 380 full-time equivalent over five years.

"This is manageable when compared to an average annual voluntary staff turnover of more than six per cent."

The university has also announced a transformation plan which will involve adding new courses to the university in "areas of global challenges that really matter to Wales", such as data science and environmental science. There are also aims to reduce expenditure through reducing the campus footprint, by monitoring rent and utilities costs.

However, lecturers at the university are not impressed by this and have revealed that they find job cuts unfair as management are focusing on spending money on this Transforming Cardiff programme.

Following the university's announcement, the Cardiff branch of the University and College Union has called on members to vote for strike action against the compulsory redundancies when they arrive.

Secretary of the Unison Cardiff University branch, Katie Hall, said they are concerned that the high level of job cuts would "inevitably harm the quality of student provision at Cardiff university."

She continued: "University support staff work as hard as they can to make Cardiff a success. They are absolutely critical to the performance of the institution and we will completely oppose compulsory redundancies."

The Union claims the situation at Cardiff is a result of bad management as it is unlikely for a top university to normally find itself £21m in the red.