UCL invests £110.2m in remuneration for staff – a message from the Provost

Dear colleagues,

Throughout the consultation for our five-year Strategic Plan 2022–2027, three messages kept recurring: that colleagues were concerned about levels of remuneration at UCL, about the state of our digital and physical infrastructure, and about workload-creating policies and processes. Except for a small investment in growing the Grand Challenges programme, the Strategy is therefore essentially about reducing the complexity and inefficiency of UCL for a better staff and student experience, and to release resources to invest in pay and infrastructure. It is about giving people the things, and the time, that they need to get on and do their jobs. 

Since the Strategic Plan was released, therefore, the University Management Committee (UMC) has been working on a strategy for improving remuneration at UCL, over and above any annual UCEA pay awards. It has taken us the best part of a year to find the resources to fund these increases. But I am pleased to announce that this week UMC approved a plan to invest £110.2 million over the next four years in remuneration for staff at UCL and our outsourced colleagues, over and above any UCEA negotiated increases. The local measures in this package will raise the median pay award for our staff to 9.5% in 2023 (including incremental progression and the national pay settlement).

We will use this investment to further increase the London Allowance (to £5,000 for most staff by Dec 23), increase the top of the pay scale for staff on Grades 1–9 and provide additional support for early career researchers – including raising the minimum salary for research fellows, improving the promotions process and supporting with visa costs. Further to this, we will be increasing minimum pay levels and improving the process of pay progression for professorial and other G10 staff.

In addition, UMC has been concerned that sabbatical entitlement at UCL is insufficient to meet the needs of researchers, particularly in long-form disciplines. For that reason, we have also looked at setting aside resources for a better sabbatical scheme and will be beginning conversations about what such a scheme might look like. 

Further details about our pay and reward strategy and an indication of what it might mean for you can be found here.

In recent months, I have been stressing that we were working on finding resources for improving pay at UCL and am pleased to be able finally to announce some of what that will entail. I recognise that there will be much still to be done on our wider programme to improve the staff and student experience, but I hope the measures announced today demonstrate how seriously we are committed to improving both remuneration and the conditions in which you work.

Yours,
Michael

Dr Michael Spence
UCL President & Provost