Scottish funding council, executive and Glasgow Uni slammed over Crichton crisis

Delegates at the inaugural UCU Congress in Bournemouth overwhelmingly backed a motion that called their collective failure of the staff and students at Crichton as 'reprehensible'.

Glasgow University announced in February that it was halting admission of undergraduates to Crichton campus. Though the soon to be merged Paisley University and Bell College are still committed to the campus they can not deliver all the subjects currently offered by the University of Glasgow.

In the recent election campaign Alex Salmond said, if elected, he would bring together the various existing stakeholders in the future of Crichton and a high-skill south-west – including Glasgow University – and ask them to provide a deliberate action plan within six months to boost higher and further education in the area.

UCU Scotland president and Glasgow delegate, Alastair Hunter, said: 'The Funding Council has stated it will find the funding and method to award extra places to the other partners, so surely they can do the same to keep Glasgow at Crichton. I have called on the Scottish Executive to ensure the continued involvement of Glasgow in Crichton as they promised in opposition and on the election trail.'

The full motion states:

'Congress deplores the collective failure of the Scottish Funding Council, the University of Glasgow, and the Scottish Executive to support and fund effectively the ground-breaking initiative of Crichton Campus. To move to the premature closure of a widely admired, cutting edge widening access initiative across the FE/HE boundary in a clearly deprived area of Scotland is a reprehensible prioritising of short-term financial exigency at the expense of dedicated staff and students.

'Congress calls on the University of Glasgow, the Scottish Funding Council, and the Scottish Executive to work together to ensure the viable future of Crichton Campus, its staff and its students.

'Congress further agrees to continue and step up the campaign of action to save Crichton and to protect the jobs of members and instructs Executive to investigate all possible actions in support of these objectives.'