Nottingham — the strikes, and what we can do about them

The short version. Your foundation year was disrupted, and this one is too. Nobody can give the lost time back and the money on offer is small — but three things are still in your hands: what you record, who you ask, and what you build while you wait. That is what this page is about.

What Rishi says — and how to read it (updated 12 October)

Dad watched Al Jazeera’s report on the Nottingham dispute and talked to Rishi. Rishi’s position: he has not been affected so far, and he believes the university will ring-fence engineering from the strikes and the funding cuts.

He may well be right about the programme. It is weaker than it looks as a prediction about his year. Three things to hold.

The restructure is redrawing the boxes, and that is exactly the mechanism that dissolves protection. Five faculties and 26 schools are becoming three colleges and 10 schools. “Ring-fencing engineering” assumes there is a school that survives as a thing with a fence around it. Nobody is closing Chemical Engineering — but the structure it sits inside is being rebuilt, and protection granted at one level does not automatically survive a change of level.
Engineering students sit in more than one school. The detailed job losses reported so far are in chemistry — a different school, and one that engineering students take modules in. That is the concrete way a “protected” course gets thinned: not by its own staff leaving, but by the service teaching it depends on getting slower, larger and more thinly supervised.
“I haven’t been affected” is a reading of a discontinuous strike, not proof of a ring-fence. The action is discontinuous — selected days between 5 October and 11 December — and nobody has to give notice. A quiet fortnight does not prove immunity; it may just be a timetable that fell kindly. The same is true of action short of a strike, which rarely cancels anything: it slows marking and email, which is precisely the part Rishi is least likely to notice and most likely to be damaged by.

Why the ring-fence claim is probably half-true — and why that is not much comfort. Engineering is the part of a university that pays: it recruits well internationally, it draws the high-fee students, and it lines up with the government’s own industrial strategy. That is a genuine commercial reason for a university to protect it, and it is the strongest argument Rishi has. But note what kind of protection it is: commercial, not promised. It lasts exactly as long as engineering keeps paying, and it does not extend to how thinly the teaching is staffed while it does.

The national picture behind the clip

Al Jazeera’s report (8 October) put Nottingham inside a sector-wide squeeze, and the numbers are worth seeing whole:

Direct government funding in England fell from 39% of university income in 2005 to 11% today.
Eight in ten universities have made voluntary redundancies. 44% have closed entire courses. 13% have closed entire campuses.
International students fill nearly a quarter of seats and bring in nearly half the fee income — around $16bn a year — and study visa applications are down more than 10% this year after the net-migration policy.
Nottingham itself: around 600 jobs at risk against a $112m gap, with music and modern languages degrees ending.

The shape of that matters more than any single figure. The sector lost its public funding, replaced it with international fee income, and has now had that income reduced by policy. Engineering is protected because it is the part of the replacement that still works. That is why Rishi is probably right — and why the protection is a market position rather than a guarantee.

What this changes

Nothing — and that is the point. If Rishi is right, the record costs him five minutes a week and proves nothing needed doing. If he is wrong, it is the only thing that will exist. The record is not a complaint; it is insurance, and it is the one item on this page that gets harder to create every week it is not kept.

What is actually happening

The dispute is about the university’s plan, not about money for teaching. Nottingham is restructuring: 609 full-time roles gone over three years, recruitment suspended on 42 courses, student:staff ratio moving from 18:1 to 22:1, and five faculties / 26 schools replaced by three colleges and 10 schools. The university says its finances require it; the union says the money does not require these cuts.
This term: strikes on 30 September and 1 October, then sustained action from 5 October to 11 December 2026 — discontinuous, meaning selected days across that span, not one long shutdown — plus action short of a strike, which is the part that makes emails and marking slower.
Not every member of staff takes part, and no one has to give notice. So work to the university’s own line: assume your teaching is going ahead unless you are told otherwise.
Your foundation year had the same thing. Strikes ran through autumn 2025 (suspended from 17 November 2025, when the university committed to no compulsory redundancies before 31 October 2026), then a marking and assessment boycott plus a continuous strike from 1 June to 31 July 2026.
Chemical Engineering is not being closed. The suspended courses are music, all modern languages and nursing, and Chemical Engineering is still recruiting for 2027. The job losses reported in detail are in the chemistry department, which is a different school.

Three things that matter more than they look

The complaints window for last year has just closed. The university asked for any complaint about industrial action in 2025/26 by 5 October 2026 — six days ago — and industrial-action complaints start at Level 2. If your foundation year cost you teaching or marking you never got back, the live question is whether a late complaint will be accepted. That is a question for SU Advice, this week, not a decision to guess at.
Your record is the only thing you can still create. Nothing is provable later without dates, modules and screenshots. Five minutes on the day a session is cancelled is worth more than an hour in July trying to remember.
The quiet risk is marking, not lectures. The university has contingency regulations it can use so you can still progress when marks are delayed — but they only help a student who notices and asks. Nobody will chase you.

What Rishi can do — in order

Same day — if a scheduled session does not run, complete the university’s disruption form (link below) and screenshot the timetable or Moodle notice.
Same week — email the module lead or your school, short and factual: date, module, session, what you missed, what you need. That is what a paper trail is made of.
Read your module learning outcomes. That is the contract — what you were promised. If specific content is missing, name it: specific complaints get answered, vague ones get reassurance.
Talk to SU Advice — free, independent of your school, and they help draft things. Ask about last year’s closed window in the same visit.
If it is material, complain — Level 2 under the complaints code, then Level 3, then the OIA (within 12 months of the “Completion of Procedures” letter). A cohort complaint is allowed and usually stronger.
Your personal tutor, or Support and Wellbeing, if it is stressing you. That is a legitimate use of both.
Deferral and transfer are real options, and a last resort. They cost a year, your place is not guaranteed on return, and transferring mid-course is at the other university’s discretion. Understand them now, while you do not need them.

What we will do

Not chase the compensation. The only hard UK benchmark is Newcastle: £2.4m across 10,934 students, about £100 per disrupted module. That is pocket money, and the paperwork is not worth your term. We are after the year, not the cheque.
Back the boring, useful things — help you keep the record, and keep the year building something you can point at: placement applications for your industry year, a project, a skill.
Not decide it for you. If you want to complain, defer, or change course, we will work out what it costs and then back your call. It is your degree.
Keep the money straight so nothing has to be rushed for cash reasons. The fee (~£9,790) sits on the Plan 5 loan — 9% of earnings above £25,000, interest capped at RPI, written off after 40 years — and our side, the £5,000 top-up, is already budgeted. A wasted year is therefore not a cash emergency, which is exactly why the time is the thing worth protecting.

What the university will and will not do

No fee refunds by default. Their position is that fees cover the library, facilities and services, “not just tuition”.
Out-of-pocket expenses are reimbursed when a session is cancelled at short notice — there is a procedure and a form.
Industrial-action complaints begin at Level 2, need evidence, and run to a stated window (the 2026/27 window has not been announced).
Contingency regulations can be deployed when marking is disrupted, so progression and graduation are protected on paper.

Sources and who to contact

Prepared for Rishi by Alf (Dad’s money helper), 11 October 2026. Read-only analysis, not personal financial advice.

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