New hiring approvals to support our continued financial sustainability

26 June 2025

As we continue to navigate a changing higher education landscape, maintaining our financial sustainability remains a top priority. To help protect this, UCL will be introducing a new, temporary, hiring approvals process for staff recruitment. Find out more.

As we continue to navigate a changing higher education landscape, maintaining our financial sustainability remains a top priority.

To help protect our financial sustainability, UCL will be introducing a new, temporary, hiring approvals process for staff recruitment. This will be in place from 1 August 2025 until at least 31 December 2025. Find more information on this page about what this process involves, which roles will be covered, which will be exempt and how we will support you throughout the process.

Ensuring our continued financial sustainability

We have been working collectively to prioritise our financial sustainability. By managing our finances carefully, we remain in a relatively strong position compared to the sector.

At the same time, we recognise the current context for the higher education sector is challenging. Across the UK, universities are facing increasing uncertainty. The most recent report from the Office for Students found that over 70% of providers are at risk of running a deficit in 2025/26, and the Russell Group are not immune to these financial pressures. This picture, alongside wider global volatility, reinforce the need for us to continue working together to maintain our financial performance.

By doing so, we can continue to invest in the things that matter: our people, our infrastructure and environment, and our identified strategic priorities. One of the most important of these has been recognising and rewarding our people by committing more to staff pay. In 2023, we committed over £110 million to a new pay and reward strategy, which remains a core commitment.

We are introducing this temporary hiring approvals process to help ensure we can continue to invest in these kinds of priorities, even in a challenging financial climate.

What’s changing and how we’ll support you

When do the changes start and how long will they last?

From 1 August to at least 31 December 2025, all’hiring activity will be subject to additional approvals.

Offers made and contracts signed before 7 July 2025 for new starters joining during the 1 August - 31 December period will be honoured.

Our plan is to review the impact of these controls on a monthly basis and a formal review is due to take place at the end of November. We’ll keep you updated regularly on progress and any changes.

Which roles will require additional approvals?

All employee roles, internal moves, temps and contractors aside from a small number of blanket exemptions.

What approvals will be needed?

All recruitment (aside from blanket exemption roles) will need approval by the Dean or VP, including any planned to take place outside of the hiring control period.

Are there any exemptions to this hiring approval process?

There are some roles which have a blanket exemption, meaning that the additional approvals do not apply and you can recruit these as usual throughout the period. These are:

Roles that do not require core funding such as fully funded research roles
PGTAs, roles engaged on teaching contracts, invigilators and visiting lecturers (in departments where additional resource is required due to over recruitment)
Extensions to fixed term employees already in post
A small number of other discrete roles.

The full list of blanket exemptions is available on the SharePoint page.

Hiring managers will also be able to present a business case for an ad hoc exception for consideration by your Dean or VP. More information on how to do this is available on the SharePoint page and the guide for submitting an exception request.

For business-critical roles, leadership may approve the role as an exception to begin during the control period. In other instances, leadership may choose to recruit a role for a start date that begins after 5 January 2026, or to pause recruitment for that role indefinitely.

How will this affect our ability to manage critical work during the control period?

Our approach to exemptions recognises some of the critical workload areas we will be asking colleagues to prioritise during this period. We will also be working with leaders to support prioritisation of activities within teams so we can ensure the wellbeing and workload of staff is considered throughout.

What support will be available to help us manage these new processes?

We will be supporting you throughout this process and regularly updating a number of FAQs and tools to help answer your questions. This includes:

Local leaders will receive toolkits and talking points to help guide conversations with their teams via a briefing tomorrow, Friday 27 June

In addition to attending the drop-in sessions, you can raise any specific questions not yet answered in the FAQs or to get support in the process by emailing recruitment@ucl.ac.uk.