A rush of redundancies, multi-university lawfare and a Bentley-owning vice chancellor

The University of Bolton faces a moment of reckoning

Dear readers — with A-levels results released yesterday, universities have entered the frantic clearing stages, trying to snap up available students. But not all is well in the higher education sector. In one of Greater Manchester’s universities, the University of Bolton, 82 staff are set to be made redundant this week, in a move the Vice Chancellor George Holmes told us was “abhorrently painful”, but nonetheless necessary.

You might recognise the name George Holmes from a recent Guardian profile where he discussed his reasons for wanting to change the name of the University of Bolton to the University of Greater Manchester. This is currently a matter of legal dispute between the University of Bolton and three other universities: the University of Salford, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester (Holmes has described the group as behaving like “a cartel”). He was also one of a long list of names who attended a secretive all male black tie dinner where two undercover Financial Times journalists revealed that the hostesses were asked to wear skimpy black dresses and some experienced inappropriate behaviour from the guests (speaking to the Bolton News at the time, Holmes condemned the behaviour of his fellow guests). Or you might know his name from the public row over whether university vice chancellors were paid enough (Holmes argued they weren’t, despite owning a yacht and a Bentley).

We spoke to Holmes — a man who some critics allege hasn’t done enough to keep the university in good shape — about what’s going on inside the organisation, why he believes he’s facing criticism from his staff, and what happens next at the university. If you’d like to read the full story, you’ll need to sign up as a paying subscriber of The Mill. We believe that high-quality local journalism should tell a more nuanced story about what’s going on inside institutions, rather than just surface-level coverage, and crucially, we need your support to fund this mission. Just sign up by clicking the button below.

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🤨 Steven Bartlett — the CEO-turned-wellness influencer and podcaster who began his career as an entrepreneur after dropping out of Manchester Metropolitan University — has been found to have starred in misleading advertisements. In ads filmed for meal replacement drink Huel and diet advice app Zoe, it wasn’t made clear that Bartlett was, respectively, a director of and investor in the companies. This was first revealed in the Times on Monday, but has gained traction as it has become more widely reported. Bartlett, who grew up in Plymouth but moved to Manchester for university, is currently an investor on BBC’s Dragon’s Den. He hosts the hugely popular Diary of a CEO podcast, interviewing guests the likes of Matt Hancock, Molly Mae Hague and Sacha Lord. We’re working on a big story about Bartlett, if you’d like to get in touch with any tips or gossip, email Jack.

🔍 Earlier this week at a Greater Manchester Overview and Scrutiny Committee, members voted against a motion to introduce an application form for the combined authority’s housing investment loan fund, the GMHILF. The fund is currently the subject of a legal challenge by Weis Group, a developer who claims that too much money from the fund is going to one developer, Renaker, and that this is distorting the property market. At Wednesday’s scrutiny committee, which focused on the fund’s governance procedures, Manchester’s local Lib Dem leader said an application form for the loan that the authority could then refer back to would help with transparency. “It protects the combined authority from accusations of being unfair,” he said. Nevertheless, it was voted down. We have written about scrutiny committees before, and about how they are a vital part of local governance that doesn’t get taken seriously enough. For example, at Wednesday’s committee, the combined authority’s housing lead, Ged Cooney, was absent.

📸 Manchester photojournalist Joel Goodman has rejected calls from police to share photos of far-right riots in Rotherham. He says sharing the photos with South Yorkshire Police would damage trust. The National Union of Journalists say the force wanting the photos is “an affront to media freedom” and an attempt to “strong arm” a reporter. "It's not just me, next time it won't be me,” says Goodman. “It could be one of my colleagues who is assaulted for being a copper's nark."

🧑‍⚖️ Following up on Tuesday’s briefing, which covered the travellers left without a permanent home after being evicted from Crompton Lodge (which we covered extensively here), a man has been fined by Bolton Council for trying to enter the site after it had been shut down. Terrance Howarth was charged just shy of £300 for entering the site at the end of July.

🚨 The number of people shot in Moss Side over the weekend has now risen to three, after another victim was identified as suffering gunshot wounds. The third victim arrived at A&E shortly after the first two, who were shot on Claremont Road on Saturday night.

🚍 The latest bus punctuality report was released by the Bee Network today, covering the week from 4-10 August. On average, punctuality was up 3.7%, with 84.8% of buses leaving between 1 minute early and five minutes late. That’s compared to an average of around 73% of buses in the same period last year, before the buses were brought back under public control.

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A rush of redundancies, multi-university lawfare and a Bentley-owning vice chancellor

By Mollie Simpson 

Around halfway through our interview, George Holmes asks me to remind him how many academic staff at the University of Bolton he is about to make redundant. “You said 32 academics, just remind me of the figure?” he says. “39,” I reply. 

It’s a rainy Tuesday afternoon, and George Holmes is calling me from his office. Holmes has been a vice chancellor at the university since 2006, an unusually long tenure that has lasted nearly 20 years. At the time, he was described as the UK’s youngest vice chancellor, having been appointed at the tender age of 44 (though he says he doesn’t know if this description is accurate). 

“You’re not talking about all the academics disappearing, it’s 39 out of a few hundred,” he says. “It’s not nice and it’s not to be recommended, but it does not mean all that student engagement will stop.” But he also acknowledges that long term, redundancies will have an impact: "Our student satisfaction is top notch. Our students give us the gold for student experience. And that will be affected by redundancies. When you reduce staff, the chance of delivering a high-quality experience gets affected."

The tone Holmes is taking is very different to some years ago, when, in a private meeting, one staff member recalls Holmes making a lofty claim: “What do the University of Bolton and the University of Cambridge have in common? No debt.” Holmes says he can’t recall when he said this, but that “it is true that at various stages during my long tenure as vice chancellor, I have said publicly that the University of Bolton was debt free, as it fact it has been.” But if the finances were looking so rosy, why the need for redundancies now? In the process of trying to answer that, we’ve uncovered questions around some of the university’s recent choices, and anger among staff at what they perceive as Holmes’ lavish wealth. Claims have been made that Holmes has used university staff, and even university money, for his house. And there have been some big outlays — including turning an old mill into a nursing school and legal fights with Greater Manchester’s other universities on a plan to change its name. 

So are the university’s struggles just a sign of broader trouble in the sector? Or is the institution where Holmes has taken the helm for almost two decades facing difficulties of his making?

‘Try sitting in this chair, staying awake 24/7’

Illustration by The Mill’s Jake Greenhalgh.