Building an incluvise campaign >P13
Roald Dahl at 100 >Venue 23rd February 2016 Issue 322
concrete-online.co.uk @Concrete_UEA ConcreteNewspaper
EXCLUSIVE
Save our union ... from its own financial blunders
Photo: Flickr, .Martin
Dan Falvey and Peter Sheehan Editor-in-Chief and Deputy editor The Union of UEA Students (UUEAS) is experiencing financial difficulty after it underestimated costs in its July 2015-16 budget by £160,000, a Concrete investigation has uncovered. Since the oversight in the budget, UUEAS has burdened students with increased prices in union outlets, considered reducing sports clubs and has accused UEA of not giving enough funding to the organisation. Errors made when budgeting for the 2015-16 academic year have resulted in the union unwittingly planning £160,000 of
unfunded expenditure. Costs associated with hosting events in the LCR were “significantly underestimated” when the original budget was prepared over the summer. The union had planned to run a break even budget, making neither a profit nor a loss, for the year between July 2015 and July 2016. However, the discovery of the missing costs now puts this in serious doubt. The blunder, which was discovered in October, is another headache for the organisation which has been in financial difficulty for several years. Losses in the 201415 academic year amounted to £712,000, of which £261,000 was not budgeted for. This represented a 46% depletion of the union’s
cash reserves, leaving it with significantly less cash to fall back on after the latest monetary loss. Minutes from union meetings, which are publicly available, indicate unforeseen losses in 2014-15 that stem from poor cost control in Events, the branch of the union that coordinates gigs, bars and club nights. Concrete first reported on the union’s financial difficulty in 2012, when it was discovered that falling revenue from retail outlets and LCR had contributed to the union running a £250,000 deficit in 2011-12 academic year. Since then, Union Council has voted to prevent the organisation from making further redundancies, and from either cutting
or freezing staff pay. UUEAS believes that no further efficiency savings can be made without harming frontline services and student activities. Documents presented last September to the Trustee Board – which is the union’s ultimate decision-making body under charities law – indicate that UUEAS has “considered actual reductions to student activity including the reduction of sports clubs”. Concrete understands that this exercise resulted in the union putting pressure on sports clubs which had fewer than 30 members to show how they were planning to increase their membership; Continued on page 6