Your SU (Students’ Union) is currently facing potential cuts to your student experience. The proposed cuts communicated to us by the University would have a significant impact on SU activities and your wider experience.
Updated Release Published: Wednesday 14th August 2024
I want to begin by thanking all of you who took the time to tell us about your experiences, and how the budgets cuts for the SU imposed by the University will affect you. We have taken these to most senior University meetings, and meetings with the senior management of the University.
Whilst it was disappointing that the University would not recognise the impact of these cuts on the SU and your student experience, we will continue to work with them to enhance your overall experience and ensure that your voices are heard.
In response to our concerns, the University has committed to supporting us through several key actions to ensure your experience remains central to our mission:
- We will be presenting our analysis from SU Speak Week to senior leaders and requesting action on the things that matter to you
- We will present our new SU strategy action plan to the Vice Chancellor and Executive later this summer
- We will be collaborating with the University's Student Voice team over the summer to plan our activities for the next academic year and explore potential functional support so we can continue to deliver for you.
The University has also shown a willingness to identify small amounts of resource that could support some of our activities and initiatives throughout the academic year. Rest assured, the Students' Union remains as committed as ever to maintaining strong student engagement and advocating for your needs. We hope that in the future we can work with the University to grow our influence and services further.
Rewathi Viswanatham
SU Vice President Education
Updated Release Published: Friday 7th June 2024
We wanted to thank over 180 students who already shared their thoughts with us. If others still want to share their thoughts, the form remains open. Your Officer Team has now written an open letter to the highest decision maker at the University, asking to return to conversations around budgets. The Team will continue working hard and lobbying on your behalf, so you get the best student experience you deserve.
Click here to provide your feedback
The Open Letter:
Dear Vice-Chancellor,
I am writing on behalf of the student body to express our deep concern regarding the proposed budget cuts to the Students' Union amounting to £80,000, and to ask you to reverse this decision.
Over the past week, we have engaged with more than 180 students, and their feedback has been overwhelmingly negative. These cuts threaten essential services and support systems that are crucial to student well-being and academic success. The Students' Union plays a vital role in fostering a vibrant and inclusive campus community, providing resources that many students rely on daily.
We understand the financial challenges faced by the university, but we firmly believe that the well-being and support of students should remain a top priority. We urge you to reconsider this decision and explore alternative solutions to address the budget shortfall.
Your support in reversing these cuts will greatly benefit the entire student body and help maintain higher standards of student life that our university is known for. We would invite further discussion with you to relay the impact students have shared with us over the past two weeks.
Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter, and we hope to have meaningful conversations.
Sincerely,
Natalia-Mia Roach
SU President
Rewathi Viswanatham
SU Vice-President
Updated Release Published: Friday 24th May 2024
We want to update you after Tuesday’s SU budget cut announcement. These recent budget cuts will significantly impact your experience of your Students’ Union. These cuts are a result of University’s proposal to reduce the SU funding by £80,000.
While this news is extremely disappointing, we want to assure you that we are committed to finding innovative ways to support your journey at Cardiff Met. Your representation, experience and engagement remain our top priorities.
As we want to be as transparent with you as possible, we have created a list of activities that will be affected by these cuts:
- We will no longer be able to recruit Part-Time Officers to represent your interests in areas of Global, Wellbeing, Equality & Diversity, Environmental, and Welsh.
- We will no longer be able to provide additional financial support to SU Sport clubs. This means that further cost of the SU Sport activity may have to be covered by increased membership fees of SU Sport clubs.
- No transport or vehicles to be provided by the SU for any non-BUCS sporting activity.
- Potential reduction of BUCS teams and individual entries, as well as potential impact on our annual SU Sport events.
- We will no longer be able to run the Student-Led Teaching Awards (SLTA’s).
- We have significantly reduced our own campaign budget, limiting the next Elected Officer team ability to have impact.
- We have had to undertake further cuts to Centro, Events, SU Societies, Cardiff Met Award which will further impact in those areas.
These cuts will have a significant impact on SU delivering representation, SU Sport Clubs, SU Societies, Cardiff Met Award, SU Workshops and our ability to deliver higher quality free/low-cost events for you.
Click here to provide your feedback
We want to hear from you on how this will impact your experience. Please click the link above to fill out a form. It will only take 2 minutes and it will give us as an Elected team the evidence to present to the University to try and challenge these cuts as much as possible!
Your Officer Team
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Natalia-Mia Roach
SU President
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Rewathi Viswanatham
SU Vice-President
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Initial Release Published: Tuesday 21st May 2024
Your SU (Students’ Union) is currently facing potential cuts to your student experience. The proposed cuts communicated to us by the University would have a significant impact on SU activities and your wider experience.
The proposed cuts to the SU budget are over £80,000, roughly 10% of the current SU block grant from the University. This will affect our ability to represent your student voice to the University, our delivery of student-led initiatives, and the SU’s ability to deliver free events. We believe these activities are essential to building student communities and a sense of belonging at Cardiff Met and fear that this will have a significant impact on the student community, some of whom have already struggled to engage in activities due to the cost-of-living crisis. At a time like this, it is not acceptable to pass these costs on to you, our students.
When talking about the proposed budget cuts, your SU President, Natalia-Mia Roach said:
“I’m extremely disappointed at the proposed cuts and how they will affect our students. I have presented examples of the impact this will have on students to the University to protect your experience, and I will continue to do so.
Students pay a considerable amount for their education and to have more taken away from them is very saddening. The student experience is core to the university life and what we offer as an SU is a vital piece of that. Student life is student-led, and we provide a service to our members to find where they belong. £80,000 is a considerable amount of money for the SU and our student groups and I fear that students will drop out without it.”
Your SU is a not-for-profit organisation and a registered charity. The University is our primary funder and all the profits made from our commercial and marketing services are put straight back into your experience. This includes everything from SU Sport Clubs, SU Societies, Academic Reps, student campaigns, the SU Advice & Support Service, the SU Freshers' Fayre, your Full-Time Elected Student Officers, and so much more that forms your student experience.
Since 2017, student numbers at Cardiff Met have increased from 10,435 to around 12,500, while our block grant remained relatively constant. When considering inflation as well as student number growth, our block grant is now nearly £500,000 behind where it should be. In turn, we have provided more for you with fewer resources to do so.
We are calling on the University’s senior management team to reconsider these cuts, and to commit to maintaining and enhancing the student experience currently provided to Cardiff Met students.
Your Officer Team
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Natalia-Mia Roach
SU President
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Rewathi Viswanatham
SU Vice-President
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