Report of Discussion: 30 June 2026

Tuesday, 30 June 2026

A Discussion was scheduled by videoconference with Deputy Vice‑Chancellor Professor Graham Virgo, DOW, presiding and the deputy for the Director of Governance and Compliance, the Junior Proctor and the Junior Pro‑Proctor as the attending officers.

Remarks were received as follows:

Remarks on the Report of the General Board, dated 10 June 2026, on the outcomes of the Academic Career Pathways (Research and Teaching) and (Teaching and Scholarship) 2025–26 exercises

(Reporter, 6828, 2025–26, p. 524).

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, it is perhaps worth noting that paragraph 2 of this Report includes the assurance that an approved procedure has been followed by the General Board. That has been customary since the controversy of a quarter of a century ago added it as a requirement.

Memories of those currently seeking promotion may not stretch back so far so perhaps it may be helpful to be the story on the record again now.

Previously the list of proposed promotions to personal professorships was published without explanation of the way it had been arrived at. Following consultation, a Notice of the General Board (Reporter, 5723, 1997–98, p. 246) set out in an Appendix the responses received, and described its own proposals. A Discussion followed on 20 January 1998 (Reporter, 5726, 1997–98, p. 340).

There were objections. A Notice was published on 2 March promising that when the Council and General Board had considered the costs, detailed proposals would be brought forward for the Regent House to consider.

In April a Report of the Council was published, unusually making mention of me as a named individual. I cannot therefore claim to have no responsibility for helping towards the development of the current arrangements, though I certainly made myself a nuisance, for which I apologise.

This Report announced that the General Board intended to report on the establishment of an office of Senior Lecturer as well as ‘several related issues concerning the structure of academic offices’. Meanwhile 76 members of the Regent House submitted a Grace proposing the establishment of a Syndicate – a rarely used constitutional possibility – to consider ‘the structure of academic offices and promotions procedures’.

This was published with a Memorandum submitted by Sir Brian Neill acting as the University’s Commissary. Review of the office of Commissary followed after two Reports, in the Reporter of 19 January 2000 (Reporter, 5797, 1999–00, p. 348) followed by a Discussion in February 2000 (Reporter, 5801, 1999–2000, p. 448), with the second Report published on 16 May 2001 (Reporter, 5846, 2000–01, p. 696).

There is therefore quite a history of controversy behind the emergence of the current arrangements.

Dr W. J. Astle (MRC Biostatistics Unit):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I should declare that I am a member of the Council, but I am not making these remarks on its behalf.

Congratulations to those who have been recommended for promotion.

Sharp-eyed readers of the Report may have noticed that the recommendation proposing the establishment of the four Clinical Professorships (Recommendation II of paragraph 8) has been reformulated. This year, unlike in previous years, the recommendation qualifies the duration of the establishment of each office ‘for the duration of [the office holder’s] Honorary Consultant contract’.

Does the new wording reflect an acknowledgement that, if the University is to establish these offices for a fixed term without contravening Special Ordinance C (ii) 12, the Regent House must approve the fixed-term nature of the offices by Grace, notwithstanding the provisions of Regulation 1(e) of the General Regulations for University Officers? If it does, then presumably an academic holding a so-called ‘co-terminous’ fixed-term contract who entered office through a promotions Report is employed on a permanent basis and is entitled to hold office until the retiring age, even if a co-terminous contractual condition is triggered. In the Discussion on the Annual Report of the General Board to the Council in January, I suggested reasons why even a Grace making an appointment fixed‑term may not suffice as a method to avoid the tenure protection provided for by Special Ordinance C (ii) 12.1 The Notice in response to that Discussion is yet to be published.

Since 1 October 2019, newly appointed clinical academics have been issued with fixed-term contracts that are co‑terminous with an honorary clinical contract with an NHS body. Previously, the Council has argued that the reason for requiring co-terminous contracts for academics who are clinically qualified is that ‘without an honorary clinical contract, those officeholders cannot work as clinical academics at the University’.2 But the reasons why a University academic may need to hold an honorary NHS contract are presumably (i) to be paid on the NHS pay‑spine, and (ii) to perform clinical work in the NHS. (i) is dealt with by Regulation 6 of the Ordinance on Payments Additional to Stipend and (ii) will be a requirement of any NHS body for which the academic might perform clinical duties. Therefore, can the Council explain why legally dubious co-terminous contracts that compromise the usual tenure provisions of the Statutes and Ordinances and are inconsistent with the Memorandum of understanding on joint staff of universities and NHS organisations, should be necessary?3 How can any claim of necessity be consistent with the acceptance, implicit in the new wording of Recommendation II, that the Clinical Professors promoted in previous years are not, in fact, co‑terminously employed? Presumably those Professors are mostly still working happily enough for the University as clinical academics.