Cambridge Developments
The Council
Three days before the 18 October 2010 meeting of Cambridge's Council I was made aware of the consultation paper being circulated by USS. In my opinion it is inadequate, and so I wrote a paper for the Council (note that the paper was thrown together quickly, so it was far from perfect; the refinement is the What do the USS pension changes mean? article written by Susan Cooper and myself).
In response to my paper the Council set up a Working Group to determine whether employees should be provided with additional examples or illustrations of the proposed changes to the USS. This group met on Monday 25 October. The note that I submitted for this review meeting is also available on-line.
The outcome of this meeting was that the University wrote to USS on 27 October 2010. The gist of the letter was that the University was keen to carry out an exemplary consultation, and it believed that illustrative examples and supplementary information would be very informative. In particular it suggested that USS should issue some illustrative examples both of the potential impact of the introduction of the CARE scheme, and of the effect of the capping of CPI on pension increases. It was also concerned about any USS members who may have already submitted responses to the consultation unaware of any potential new information. As such it suggested that consideration should be given to allowing them to amend their responses if new information was provided.
The University received a response from USS which indicated that USS did not believe there to be grounds for them to provide such information. They did however suggest that the University contact EPF, as the body that may decide upon whether any supplementary information should be made available.
The University has since written to USS, indicating its regret that more information has not been provided but confirming that EPF will be contacted. In addition, EPF has been contacted as proposed, with a request for a rapid response.
I will update this page as more information becomes available.
Cambridge UCU
For the Congregation on 30 November 2010, 191 members of Oxford have proposed a Congregation Resolution requesting that Oxford both provide additional information and conduct a ballot of active members of the USS.
Cambridge UCU is collecting signatures to initiate a 50-member Grace for submission to the Regent House; this Grace is almost identical to the Oxford Resolution. Members of the Regent House may wish to consider supporting the Grace by downloading, signing and returning to the Registrary.
The Cambridge Forum
There is a USS Consultation topic on the Cambridge forum discussion service run by the UCS (this is a Raven-authenticated service, so you need a Cambridge Raven password in order to access the forum).