25 August 2026
Dear First Minister,
At 6.30 am today, the University of Dundee’s Chief People Officer wrote to staff announcing the start of the voluntary redundancies process, potentially leading to compulsory redundancies, as University management aims to reduce the staffing headcount by an additional 154 FTE. All day today up to 500 members of staff have been called into hastily organised meetings with management, some with just 5 minutes notice, to inform them that they are at risk of redundancy and have less than ten days to apply for voluntary redundancy. This is the culmination of two years of pain, sacrifice, and goodwill from staff to hold together a university whose governance and financial failures they didn’t cause but are paying the price for.
Most seriously, these proposed cuts do not appear to be required to meet the staffing reduction set out in the university’s own Strategy to Recovery.
The Strategy to Recovery (StR) was prepared in May 2026 based on approximately 2,500 FTE staffing at the University and proposed reducing this number to 2,313 FTE. As of August 2026, staffing has already fallen to approximately 2,355 FTE. Yet management is now seeking a further reduction of 154 FTE staff. On those figures, the University’s staff numbers would fall to around 2,200 FTE – more than 100 FTE below the staffing level on which the Strategy to Recovery was approved by Court.
Notably, the Scottish Government made exceptional public funding available for the University of Dundee’s recovery, while the Scottish Funding Council attached conditions requiring financial safeguards and meaningful staff engagement. It also required the University’s Academic Operating Model to be supported by a detailed workforce plan, linked directly to the Strategy to Recovery, setting out the future size and shape of the institution. The current proposals now appear to depart materially from the staffing assumptions in the approved Strategy to Recovery, yet management has not explained why.
If the workforce plan on which the recovery was approved has changed so substantially, the Government must establish whether its own funding conditions are still being satisfied.
The University of Dundee continues to operate without an officially approved budget for the current financial year, which started on 1 August 2026. Neither the financial issues nor the governance and cultural problems that have caused the initial crisis at Dundee University have been adequately addressed by its leadership. The failures of the consultation process now risk compounding those problems by exposing the University to potentially substantial legal claims, employment tribunal awards and further avoidable financial losses following the extensively documented procedural and substantive failures of the collective consultation process for voluntary redundancy.
The latest round of redundancies will raise the total jobs lost at the University of Dundee to over 1000 jobs, which will result in roughly £50 million in lost wages being removed from the local economy. This does not account for other indirect losses from course closures leading to fewer students staying in the city and fewer opportunities for a high-quality education for the young people of the city and Scotland.
Without financial integrity, rigorous scrutiny and effective governance, there is every risk that Dundee will remain in crisis for years to come.
What will the Scottish Government do then — provide another tranche of public money, allow another round of redundancies, and maintain once again that management decisions and actions are a matter for an autonomous university alone?
First Minister, you have followed the crisis at the University of Dundee closely.
You have repetitively met with its leadership. Your Government entrusted this leadership with up to £62 million of public money to deliver a credible recovery. You have also spoken publicly about the University’s future. You have told Parliament that staff and trade unions must be meaningfully consulted and that your Government will ensure that that is the case. When further job cuts were announced on 16 June, you told Parliament that although the Scottish Funding Council believed the University had complied with the conditions attached to public funding, ministers themselves “had not been assured on the details’ and would require to see them — because the funding direction came from ministers.”
So, today we are asking you personally:
At what point, does standing at arm’s length become a failure to exercise responsibility?
Are you satisfied that the significant job cuts are necessary, financially justified, and consistent with the conditions attached to the extraordinary public funding provided by your government?
Are you confident that they will secure Dundee’s future and not cause further harm to the University, the city and its communities?
And if you are not, will you intervene before irreversible damage is done?