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No 6223

Wednesday 11 May 2011

Vol cxli No 27

pp. 741–752

Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Lynn Gladden was presiding, with the Registrary, the Senior Proctor, and four other persons present.

The following Report was discussed:

Report of the Council, dated 14 March 2011, on the governance arrangements for the North West Cambridge project and for the development of West Cambridge (Reporter, 2010–11, p. 618).

Professor J. M. Rallison (Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education):

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I wish to speak in support of the Report of the Council on the proposed governance arrangements for the North West Cambridge project. The establishment of a Syndicate, for the reasons and on the terms set out in the Report, is the most appropriate way of ensuring that the project could proceed with the necessary delegation of powers within a strategic framework set by the Regent House through the master plan. Those delegated powers are balanced, in the proposals, with appropriate accountability and reporting obligations. I do not wish to repeat the arguments made in the Report for the establishment of a Syndicate but I would like to recommend one change to the special regulations for the Syndicate appended to the Report which would bring the Report’s recommendations into effect. The regulations envisage that the Syndicate would be chaired by the Vice-Chancellor or his duly appointed deputy. Under Statute D, III, 7(b), any deputy appointed by the Vice-Chancellor must be a member of the Regent House.

The other members of the Syndicate are to be appointed by the Council. While Regulation 1(a) follows in form what is true for other University Syndicates, I believe that it would strengthen the arrangements for forming the West and North West Cambridge Syndicate if the Chairman were also appointed by the Council but without restriction to members of the Regent House. This would widen the pool of those able to bring the time and skills to this very important project. While I believe that this would be a significant improvement in general terms for the proposals now under Discussion, it would, immediately, remove a further difficulty. The current Chairman of the West and North West Cambridge Project Board is Mr Alexander Johnston, a member of the Finance Committee. Mr Johnston has brought enormous commitment, energy, vision, and experience to the Project Board. In the view of the current members of the Project Board, he would be the natural founding Chairman of the Syndicate who would command their full support. He is, however, not a member of the Regent House, although he is a member of the Senate.

I would like therefore to propose that the proposed Regulation 1(a) be amended to read: ‘A person appointed by the Council as Chairman’. This would, in my opinion, strengthen the proposals set out in the Report, but also have the important effect of ensuring that there may be continuity in the Chairmanship of the body responsible to the University for the project at a crucial time in its development.

Mr D. J. Goode (Faculty of Divinity):

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, at a Discussion of the Regent House on Tuesday, 6 November 2007,1 on a Report of the Council, dated 22 October 2007, on governance: membership of the Council, etc,2 I pointed out that the number of external members of Council, combined with the figure for quorum proposed in that Report, could lead to a situation where Council could transact University business with no practising academics present and the four external members being the majority, and with not one single member present who was actually elected by, and therefore directly accountable to, the Regent House.

In its responding Notice of 3 December 2007,3 Council acknowledged that having a quorum which was equal to, or fewer than, the number of external or unelected members was unsatisfactory and proposed that the quorum be raised from seven to nine members to forestall the situation.

At today’s Discussion, and at considerable risk of being a bit of a bore, Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am going to say pretty much the same thing again.

Annex 1 of the Report under discussion today proposes the establishment of a West and North West Cambridge Estates Syndicate. In setting out the Syndicate’s membership, paragraph 1 of Annex 1 of the Report proposes ‘the Vice-Chancellor (or duly appointed deputy) as Chairman’, and that Council appoints ‘a University officer’ and nine members ‘who shall be persons with experience and expertise in matters relevant to the affairs of the Syndicate (at least four of whom shall be members of the Regent House)’.

Paragraph 3 of Annex 1 of the Report sets out the quorum: ‘No business shall be transacted at any meeting of the Syndicate unless at least five members are present’.

Turning for a moment to the nine members to be appointed by Council, though it doesn’t explicitly mention external members, there is scope for a majority of them to be just that, as a minimum of four shall be members of the Regent House, which means five (i.e. the majority of the nine) not only need not be members of the Regent House, but need not even be members or staff of the University at all.

In fact, Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, applying Council’s argument in the Notice I referred to above on the value of external members of University decision-making bodies:

It is important that the members of the Council in class (e) are external and independent of the University, and can be perceived as such. Otherwise their utility to the University is compromised.4

It would seem that at least some, if not all, of the up-to-five-out-of-nine members of the Syndicate to be appointed by Council, who need not be members of the Regent House, could be external, as they must be ‘persons with experience and expertise in matters relevant to the affairs of the Syndicate’.

Paragraph 4 of the Report says that the Syndicate shall be responsible for the ‘management, development, and stewardship’ of the West and North West Cambridge Estates.

While we may be able to find some of that expertise ‘in house’ (or, should I say, ‘in Regent House’?), I can see a situation where most, if not all, of those five places could be filled with imported talent from the commercial sector.

So, if the Chairman and the ‘University officer’ and the four members appointed from the Regent House (and I note they are appointed from the Regent House, Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and not appointed by the Regent House) all were absent for a meeting of the Syndicate, and the five members were from the commercial sector, we could find ourselves in a situation where the Syndicate could transact University business with no practising academics present and the five external members being the majority, and with not one single member present who was actually elected by, and therefore directly accountable to, the Regent House.

Which, Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, sounds remarkably, and rather depressingly, similar to what I said in 2007.

Now, some may say that I am being paranoid, that my ability to think straight has been seriously compromised by the deafening noise of the imaginary black helicopters circling overhead.

But that would be to miss my point, Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, which is not that I think this will happen. My point is that the proposed text means that Statutes and Ordinances will put us in a position where it could happen. And that is a mistake.

Footnotes