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COUNCIL PAPER ON TRANSFORMING CARDIFF AS APPROVED BY COUNCIL ON 11TH FEBRUARY 2019
1. Executive Summary Transforming Cardiff is a programme of change that will enable Cardiff University to deliver the key strategic outcomes described in The Way Forward, 2018 - 23 strategy whilst addressing the external and internal factors that have had a negative financial impact. This means cultural change in order to enhance the student experience and staff well-being while creating financial stability. The University has an excellent workforce, which has enabled our current success. The quality of our teaching, research and professional service support is a key part of what makes our University a great place to work and study. We must retain and support excellent staff; one of the major drivers of the project is to build on and improve that quality still further in the context of a competitive market both for high performing students and staff. Our ambition is to be a leading Russell Group institution, in the world top 100 and the UK top 20 that delivers high quality teaching, a consistent student experience and research excellence that addresses the challenges of our time, whilst reflecting our commitment to the Civic Mission. To support this ambition, addressing staff workload and student feedback will be critical. It is essential to plan and implement this programme now, given the current financial circumstances and in the context of the external environment. The programme is carefully phased to minimise disruption and to manage workload, with a timeline matching that of The Way Forward. We are pleased to report some early successes under the Transforming Cardiff programme to date. Better than anticipated student recruitment this year, cost reduction and staff recruitment controls are beginning to have a positive effect on the financial position. Our proposed approach will reduce our operating deficit in 2018/19 and bring us back to an operating surplus during 2019/20, thereafter increasing to the level of surplus required to sustain and invest in our collective vision, albeit over a slightly longer time scale than initially requested by Council. Staff costs will be reduced from 60% to 56% of income by 2022/23. In order to achieve this, we plan to reduce current staff levels by 6.7%, or 380 fte, over five years. This is manageable when compared with a normal annual staff voluntary turnover average of 6.4%. We hope the required reduction can be achieved through recruitment controls, voluntary severance and the introduction of a staff establishment model. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that compulsory redundancies may at some stage be required, we believe that a gradual reduction over a five-year period will give us the savings we need in a sustainable manner. This phased approach, mapped against The Way Forward , is precisely what guarantees the stability and effectiveness of our plans in an uncertain external environment. Table 1 shows our forecast operating surplus over the period. Table 1 : Financial Summary 2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 2022/ £'m £'m £'m £'m £'m Income 518.6 532.0 550.8 568.4 588. Staff Costs - 311.8 - 317.0 - 313.5 - 320.3 - 328. Other costs - 217.4 - 214.6 - 220.0 - 226.3 - 233. Operating Surplus - 10.6 0.4 17.3 21.8 26.
Staff costs : income 60.12% 59.59% 56.92% 56.35% 55.79%
2. Transforming Cardiff: Five Pillars 2.1 Pillar One: Organisational Change In the first phase we have already made modest cost savings and achieved a reduction in staff numbers through recruitment controls. We will embark on strategic organisational change to support our ambition, with appropriate engagement and consultation with, students and other stakeholders. Initial ideas (described in more detail in section 3) include: - The creation of a new School of Literatures, Languages and Creative Practice to support innovative cross-disciplinary teaching and research; - An exploration of how geography (physical and human) is best delivered at the University; - Reconfiguration in the School of Healthcare Sciences to improve the delivery of allied healthcare subjects and nursing across Wales;
- Co-location of the School of Optometry and Vision Sciences and the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences to allow for shared resources and rationalisation of estate. 2.2 Pillar Two: Transforming Services We will create one professional service for the University, bringing together the activities and processes of Professional Services staff across Schools, Colleges and University. We aim to deliver effective professional support at scale, aligned to our strategic priorities, and in a way that will provide consistency of experience for students, staff and stakeholders. We will also provide better career development opportunities for all Professional Service staff, enabling us to develop and retain a highly skilled workforce. Our services will be co-created with academic colleagues and with clear accountability to academic colleagues. They will be designed to meet the needs of students and staff. All plans will be appropriately consulted on and will be subject to an equality impact assessment. 2.3 Pillar Three: Education We will create a consistent, high quality student experience and drive cultural change to improve our performance. We will deliver consistent programme administration, via new student hubs focused on supporting our students and staff. We will continue to develop the Cardiff Offer and the teaching estate, supported by a more efficient teaching timetable. We will improve our support for revenue-generating activities such as international student recruitment and CPD provision. We will revise the curriculum, make better use of shared teaching and learning and introduce more efficient and effective methods of measuring and supporting our teaching quality and programme delivery. We will systematically review all academic units, via application of a series of principles, tests and evidence to inform our judgments. We also aim to balance academic priorities and endeavor with financial sustainability. This will enable us to ensure that all our teaching activity is of high quality and well aligned to future employability; consistent with being a global top 100 University. All plans will be appropriately consulted on, co-produced with staff and students, and will be subject to an equality impact assessment. Taken together, these measures will lead to a substantial improvement in student experience as well as improved efficiency. 2.4 Pillar Four: Research We will invest in research excellence where we have opportunities to grow our research capacity and income. We will develop new approaches to enhance our research partnerships with non-academic stakeholders, aligned to a changing external funding landscape increasingly focused on applied and impactful research. We will review the University’s strategic research entities and consider how these should be optimally supported. We will identify interventions designed to enhance research income and overhead generation. We will ensure research grant success is appropriately recognised and supported, including the optimal deployment of QR funding to allow continuous improvement in the University’s research performance.
Under this plan, additional cost savings could be achieved by reviewing our Languages for All offer and reshaping our language provision. Furthermore, we will explore whether or not we are the right organisation to deliver Welsh for Adults, working with partners to ensure that courses continue. We will work with the disciplines to plan the size of the new School in terms of academic staff and it is envisaged that the reconfiguration will enable staff to teach across a range of subject areas. This will capitalise on teaching synergies and cross-School expertise that are currently untapped given the siloed nature of our programme delivery. 3.1.2 In the School of Healthcare Sciences we wish to propose a reconfiguration of the School’s discipline portfolio and rationalisation of its infrastructure requirements. Review of the School’s portfolio of programmes and support for them has been underway since March 2018. The School is currently a major provider of nursing and allied health profession education in Wales, delivering a large and complex portfolio of healthcare programmes, many of them commissioned in line with NHS Wales workforce requirements through contracts negotiated with Workforce, Education and Development Services (WEDS), now Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW). In several cases, the contract price for undergraduate courses is less than £9k per annum and, in recent years, large growth in student number commissions has caused challenges for delivery, staffing and estate capacity. We suggest that we should discontinue some areas of activity that are atypical of a Russell Group university, have weak academic standing (student recruitment metrics, student experience, attrition rate, league table performance etc.) and have little or no research activity. The reconfigured School would be consolidated around principal discipline areas that each delivers excellent student experience, research excellence, and postgraduate activity. We will also consult with staff and other stakeholders on a strategy to be developed in 2019/20 for reconfiguring Adult Nursing, Child Nursing and Mental Health Nursing to simplify the undergraduate portfolio with the possibility of moving to one intake per annum, gaining stability in undergraduate student numbers, rationalised programme delivery and organisation, with a resultant improvement in student experience. All areas will be reviewed for potential enhancement, in line with NHS workforce requirements, and growth of associated research activity, postgraduate education and opportunities for international student growth. The timescale for full implementation of these revisions would likely be 2019 - 2023. Programmes selected for discontinuation may vary, subject to discussions with HEIW and the need to transfer these activities to alternative providers to maintain NHS workforce requirements. Current commissioning contracts in the University run until 2021 and negotiation of new contracts to commission undergraduate programmes will begin in Spring 2019 with the expectation that contracts are finalised in 2020 for implementation in September 2021. It is likely that enrolment of students in 2020 on programmes intended for subsequent discontinuation would require teach out until at least 2023. During the period 2019 - 2021, the postgraduate and continuing professional development portfolio will also be developed, building on opportunities created by HEIW’s workforce development strategy. It is anticipated that the long-term future of the School will entail physical location in a single facility at Heath Park. At present there are very considerable issues of split-site working and we will therefore begin to explore immediately options that would permit closer location of the different parts of the School and allow release of Eastgate House. 3.1.3 For historic reasons, the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences hosts two organisational entities that together require recurrent investment totalling £0.5m per annum; the Wales Institute for Minimal Access Therapy (WIMAT) and the Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine (WIFM). Neither entity is central to our academic endeavours but both are of national and political importance and we will develop plans in partnership with other organisations (HEIW and the Coroner’s Office) to secure their future arrangements. We are currently party to discussions initiated by the Coroner’s Office to review arrangements for the post- mortem service.
3.1.4 We will explore options for reducing the Optometry footprint on Maindy Road allowing the better sharing of resources. These options include the co-location of the School of Optometry and Vision Sciences and the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences These Schools are the only providers of optometry and pharmacy education in Wales. They are highly ranked as providers of undergraduate education in these discipline areas, although each is under increasing undergraduate market competition, has limited potential for undergraduate growth and has high estates costs. We will explore options that improve the Schools’ infrastructure cost profiles, including the potential to co-locate activities and rationalise estates, professional services and other infrastructure requirements for teaching and research, with the additional benefits of enhancing teaching and research synergies and greater assurance of long-term financial sustainability for both discipline areas. Co-location in the Redwood Building would revert to the situation pertaining up to 2006/7 when both Schools occupied the building. Since that time, there has been no substantial growth in numbers of students or staff in either School, although teaching facilities have been enhanced considerably in both areas. All options will be fully explored and costed. Co-location would necessitate further investment in the Redwood Building but could secure recurrent operational savings. Plans already in place for the closure of the Redwood JBIOS unit could release space on the third floor where there is also an under-used laboratory wing. All proposals would likely require retention of the specialised optometry clinic facility on the ground floor of the Maindy Road building. The remainder of the building could be released for other use, potentially obviating the urgent requirement for space to accommodate research activities on the Maindy Road site. Consolidation and rationalisation of estate and programme support functions (undergraduate and postgraduate) across the Schools would contribute to long-term financial sustainability. Discipline identity is a significant part of both the Optometry and Pharmacy offerings and, in developing options, close attention will be required to ensure that the two disciplines retain individual profession identities to ensure any change does not impact on recruitment or programme accreditation by the professional regulators. It is anticipated that co-location would increase the opportunities for shared and inter-professional education. There is potential for sharing core and common research facilities and enhanced research collaboration, leading to research income growth, together with rationalisation of high- cost research laboratory infrastructure. The timeline for change would be contingent on the completion of enabling estates works, likely to be in 2021/22. Programme delivery savings are unlikely to be significant as undergraduate student numbers and academic staff requirements would be broadly similar. However, plans are being developed for reform of Optometry undergraduate education (in compliance with the regulator’s requirements). This would release time to permit staff to develop the research portfolio and provide opportunities for modest growth in postgraduate taught provision; plans are currently being developed in both Schools, with income-generating postgraduate taught reforms anticipated from 2020. Academic merger of pharmacy and optometry may be a longer-term option but this would have to be predicated on securing further financial and academic gains beyond those achieved by co-location. 3.2 Cultural change It is clear that we need to have a robustly driven cultural change to address performance that does not meet expectations consistent with being a Russell Group university. We will undertake a systematic review of our academic disciplines and research units with a view to developing recovery plans for those units whose performance does not meet our shared expectations.^1 Actions will be undertaken on a case-by-case basis and would require an agreed plan and business case to address the issues, along with appropriate engagement and consultation. Examples of this could be discontinuation of activity, introduction of new courses, mergers, reconfiguration etc. Some aspects of this work will take place under the education and research pillars. (^1) https://intranet.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/your-employment/your-performance/academic-staff
Changes of this nature will be designed during the early part of the programme with pilots and “test and learn” initiatives informing the full design and roll-out of change. Wherever possible, changes to processes and roles will be made in an incremental way and full implementation will not occur unless the overall service can be maintained. 4.1 Current Ideas for Transformation 4.1.1 Student Hubs will draw together roles from Schools, Colleges and Registry to offer a single Education service and a front-line enquiry service and point of contact for students and staff for all education support matters. They will be strategically placed across the campus and will work in conjunction with the Centre for Student Life to ensure seamless access to the full range of student support. 4.1.2 Research Support will be developed to provide a University-wide strategic approach to research funding and to enhance support to the research community. This includes the establishment of a shared research technician resource. 4.1.3 Making Transactional Processing more efficient covers each Professional Service function and requires detailed end to end process review to allow the many and inconsistent transactional operational activities currently undertaken to be more efficient and effective. 4.1.4 Procurement/Category Management will see the University implement a strategic category management approach to gain substantially better value from the management of the ~£170m it spends on external services and suppliers. 4.1.5 Further ideas have been suggested about function specific and cross-cutting initiatives that will require all the Professional Service areas to work together. These include possibilities for making better use of shared resources, facilities and technology and will be further developed through engagement and consultation with a broad range of colleagues as the programme progresses. 4.2 Our approach The programme will actively work on developing the culture described in the Cardiff Professional^2 whilst allowing and encouraging authenticity in individual organisational units. The programme will actively promote digital competencies and ensure that clear and appropriate management information is made available by all projects as part of any new service propositions.
5. Pillar 3: Education This work is focused on four aims: (i) reviewing and revising our programme portfolio to realise new and emergent market opportunities, and to ensure sustainable provision; (ii) ensuring a consistent student experience; (iii) improving the quality of teaching, and; (iv) supporting a culture where teaching and support for the student experience are highly valued. 5.1 Reviewing and revising our programme portfolio We will develop and extend programmes that provide market-tested opportunities for new provision, with a clear focus on education that is interdisciplinary, has international appeal, addresses grand challenges and produces work-ready graduates. Examples include consolidating postgraduate growth in computer science, creating new programmes in environmental sustainability and water studies, introducing a shared Geography UG programme between the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences and the School of Geography and Planning, covering both human and physical geography, and building new postgraduate provision in the biological and health sciences, including psychology. We will also take bold decisions about programmes to improve their financial viability such as rationalising teaching into areas of strength to improve teaching efficiency and student experience. (^2) https://intranet.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/your-employment/your-performance/cardiff-professional
5.2 Ensuring a consistent student experience We have commissioned a holistic review of our academic regulations to ensure greater clarity and consistency, including changes to our assessment regulations. We are developing a common approach to curriculum design and delivery, which includes reducing the total number of modules, increasing placement opportunities, and ensuring programmes and modules are sustainable. We will also embark on a major piece of work to transform the student and staff assessment experience as well as deliver a new approach to student education services through the development of student hubs, as part of transforming services. A relatively small number of student hubs, located near to our students and academic schools, will provide a more consistent approach to examination and assessment, registry processes, programme administration and academic support. Student hubs will also provide a university-wide approach for student queries and communication. 5.3 Improving the quality of teaching We will develop and implement a new survey management framework, alongside a clear methodology for using institutional data consistently to identify priorities and cases for support and intervention. We will implement and evaluate an institution-wide, consistent approach to module evaluation. This will include clear thresholds for monitoring and intervention for modules with low levels of student satisfaction. Schools will also robustly address education performance and student experience, under a more directive ethos from Colleges. Issues of teaching quality will be scrutinized and challenged at module and programme level. We will drive the cultural change required to address performance, with teaching quality and student satisfaction surfaced more clearly and consistently in the performance development reviews of staff and Schools. We will enable careers of excellence for all our staff who teach. For disciplines where there are particular concerns in relation to teaching quality and education performance, opportunities for strategic disinvestment, or for significantly re-organising the management and delivery of programmes, will be pursued. 5.4 Supporting a culture where teaching and support for the student experience are highly valued We will develop a clear and transparent methodology for evidencing both teaching excellence and poor performance at programme, module and individual levels. We will overhaul our framework for continuing professional development for teaching, building in clear expectations about teaching quality at all stages of the academic career, as well as developing our leadership in teaching pedagogy. We will increase the numbers of academic staff with external recognition of teaching excellence, and strengthen our leadership for teaching across all schools.
6. Pillar 4: Research This work is focused on three aims: (i) increasing research income generation (ii) providing a proactive, agile and strategic professional research support service, and; (iii) enhancing our research environment, facilitating the delivery of world leading research excellence at all stages of the academic career. 6.1 Increasing research income generation We have consulted with academic and professional service staff via our new Research Income Group and identified a series of bottlenecks that impact on our research income success, as well as opportunities that would allow us to lever additional research income. Assessment of research income by discipline has allowed us to identify areas where specific interventions are required due to below expectation performance. An action plan and timeline for addressing those bottlenecks will be presented to UEB in early February 2019. Prior to this, we have: (a) acted to reduce the amount of University money allocated as in-kind contributions to research grants, via the implementation of a new governance structure whereby agreement for the waiving of overheads and PI time needs agreement from the PVCR and Director of Finance; (b) agreed to establish a new Funding Oversight Group to develop a research pipeline for large-scale grants, manage our approach to horizon scanning, prioritise support for research grant submissions and develop a consistent approach to internal peer review for research grants at the University; (c) agreed to establish a strategic
We will undertake a review of our Residences Strategy to ensure that we provide a range of accommodation to suit individual preferences and attract a wider range of students to choose to live in our residences. We will consider the disposal of outdated property such as University Hall and some of our individual housing stock and we will establish a realistic plan for potential new build. We will establish a University Space Policy for our non-residential estate which will include space norms and space guidelines. We will use a formulaic approach to determine the overall space required for each School and Department and be informed by evaluation against other Russell Group universities that are similarly sized with similar profile. This will include a policy for multi-occupancy offices and will encourage more collaborative environments. This activity will be informed by regular surveying of space utilisation. We will ensure that we maximise the return from our estate by monitoring running costs and income/m^2 to ensure all activities are located appropriately.
8. Financial Summary At its meeting in July 2018 Council agreed that the University should return to a financially sustainable position by 2020/21 with a target operating surplus of £9m in 2019/20 and £24m in 2020/21. A range of measures have already been put in place to address the financial challenges and these, together with an increase in student fee income, enable us to propose an approach that will reduce our operating deficit in 2018/19, bring us back to an operating surplus during 2019/20 increasing to an appropriate surplus thereafter in order to sustain and invest in our collective vision, albeit in a slightly longer time scale than initially requested by Council. All current actions and future proposals described have been costed where possible. The outcome of these and impact on the deficit/surplus is as follows: 2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 2022/ £'m £'m £'m £'m £'m Income 518.6 532.0 550.8 568.4 588. Staff Costs - 311.8 - 317.0 - 313.5 - 320.3 - 328. Other costs - 217.4 - 214.6 - 220.0 - 226.3 - 233. Forecast Operating surplus - 10.6 0.4 17.3 21.8 26. Staff costs : income - 60.12% - 59.59% - 56.92% - 56.35% - 55.79% Staff costs will be reduced from 60% to 56% of income by 2022/23. In order to achieve this, we will need a net reduction in fte of 380 over this period. We hope this can be achieved by recruitment controls, voluntary severance and the introduction of a staff establishment model; however, at this stage we cannot rule out compulsory redundancies. The forecast Operating Surplus by College/Centre is: 2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 2022/ £'m £'m £'m £'m £'m AHSS 60.5 60.7 63.8 66.0 67. BLS 34.3 35.0 43.7 47.4 50. PSE 23.7 27.2 28.8 29.3 33. Prof. Services - 104.1 - 97.5 - 94.0 - 90.9 - 89.
Central - 25.0 - 25.0 - 25.0 - 30.0 - 35. Forecast Operating surplus - 10.6 0.4 17.3 21.8 26. The forecast currently excludes the positive financial impact of the Diamond Review in 2020/21 (estimated at £17m in a full year) or any changes to Diamond as a result of the Welsh Government adopting the Augar review recommendations. The forecast also excludes the impact of the pension cost sharing arrangements proposed by USS which are estimated will cost £11m in 2020/21. It is hoped that a further actuarial valuation at March 2018 will enable a lower level of employer contributions. The forecast has not made any changes to tuition fees or research income that may arise as a result of Brexit. In order to deliver the proposed changes and improved financial position the investment in change over four years is currently estimated at £16m for severance costs and £20m for the service transformation costs.
9. Approach and timeline The timeline proposed for the changes in this paper, and presented in Appendix 1 , will give time not only for formal consultation processes to happen where needed, but also for allowing as much staff engagement as possible. The overarching proposals will be discussed with staff at a series of meetings following Council. Any plans for change will be presented as full business cases and worked on in collaboration with a range of stakeholders, depending on the plans. Academic proposals will be discussed at Senate. Where ideas have been identified in outline only, informal consultation and, where possible, participatory design with those affected will happen as part of the process of creating the plans. We will seek to pilot changes to processes and roles within Professional Services before full implementation. Plans will also be consulted on with Unions. Transforming Cardiff is conceived strategically and providently on a timeline matching that of The Way Forward 2018 - 13 , by which the project is driven. The phased, extended timeline allows us to be both strategic and responsive at a time of huge unknowns, while driving through a clear plan to achieve financial sustainability.
