News stories from across the Facilities Directorate at the University of Leeds.

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – August 2025

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Email sent to all FD staff from Jen Wilson, Director of Campus Innovation: Masterplanning, Asset Management & Sustainability, on Thursday 1 August. 

Hello everyone,

The campus is buzzing with graduations and many other events, such as summer schools. Over 7000 students will have graduated by the end of the week, and the Conferences & Events team have hosted 42 events and welcomed 9,521 delegates to campus to date. This takes an enormous effort and we’re very grateful to all the FD teams involved.

Sustainability

Thanks too to the Sustainability team for organising a great event recognising the contributions of staff and local community organisations who are driving sustainability forward across campus and beyond. Congratulations to all the winners and especially our own Mike Leonard who scooped two awards. You can read more about the Sustainability Celebration on the staff intranet.

You may also be interested to know that the Climate Plan Annual Review has been published by the Priestley Centre.

Pay and pensions

As you may already have read on the staff intranet, a national pay award of 1.4% will be applied to all non-clinical colleagues from 1 August 2025 and the resulting increases in pay will be seen in payslips at the end of August 2025. Please ask your line manager if you have any questions.

Additionally, phase three of the University’s Pay Framework Review has taken place which focuses on changing the pay structure to take account of market pay. HR acknowledge that this is the most complicated phase so please do contact HR if you have any questions. You can read about these phase three changes on the staff intranet.

Changes to the University of Leeds pension scheme have been communicated to all members of the scheme by letter. Please direct any questions to [email protected].

FD news

The FD’s first induction event for new starters took place last week, with Rob presenting an overview of the FD and the University. There was very positive feedback after the event and these will be held regularly from now on.

The idea was suggested by Staff Voice and the Communications team and is partly a response to Employee Engagement Survey 2023 results in which some people wanted greater clarity about the work of the FD. The slides will be shared with everyone in due course and new dates announced soon.

The Estate Planning and Information team will be moving into the Asset Management team, led by Phil Dougill, as part of succession planning for Michele Troughton’s retirement. This change is effective from 1 August.

The next FD Online Town Hall is on 17 September from 10-10.30am. This time you can join David Oldroyd (Head of Capital Programme Delivery and Design) and Will Reed (Development Manager) for a brief overview of some key activities for the year ahead from Capital Development and Campus Reimagined, plus an update from Rob. and plenty of time for questions. You should have received an email invitation. If you can’t make it, a link to the event is sent out afterwards.

Staff Voice

Representatives from Staff Voice attended the Residences Annual Conference and Sport & Physical Education Away Days this summer to explain the benefits of Staff Voice and how to get involved. If you’d like them to attend your meeting, please contact [email protected]

Finally…

Find out more about Sue Pimblett, Head of Marketing, Sales & Communications in the FD, and Andy Lockwood, Assistant Head of Sport in new 15 to 1 interviews. Particularly enjoyed reading about Andy’s ‘random claim to fame’!

Regards,

Rob & Jen

Rob Wadsworth, Director of Campus Innovation: Campus Services, Experiences & Commercial

Jen Wilson, Director of Campus Innovation: Masterplanning, Asset Management & Sustainability

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – July 2025

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Email sent to all FD staff from Rob Wadsworth, Director of Campus Innovation: Campus Services, Experience & Commercial, on Tuesday 1 July.  Read more

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – June 2025

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Email sent to all FD staff from Jen Wilson and Rob Wadsworth on Tuesday 3 June.  Read more

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – May 2025

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Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on 1 May 2025

Hello everyone,

Spring has definitely arrived and our students are back on campus, many of them facing exams and assessments. Thank you to everyone involved in this process, including the Print & Mail team who have the huge responsibility of getting papers printed and delivered on time.

Employee Engagement Survey

Thanks again to everyone who completed the Employee Engagement Survey and also to people who contributed to the One Leeds mid-term strategy consultation. The University will be sharing general results of the Survey next week, so look out for that on the Staff Intranet and in next week’s eNews.

On 9 June, Angela Baker – People & Culture Lead – and I will be hosting an online Town Hall event about the FD’s results. You should have been sent an invitation by email (if you haven’t, please contact the Estates Helpdesk on [email protected].)

We’ve listened to feedback about town halls and they are now 30 minutes rather than an hour. A reminder that they are intended to provide an update on key FD work from our business plan, Our Way Ahead, and/or key work in the university, like the Staff Survey. Myself or Rob Wadsworth will also give a general update.

There are plenty more ways to share your thoughts this month:

Sustainability Awards

The nominations are open and the team are keen to get nominations from colleagues across the FD so we can reward and celebrate some of the great work that is being carried out within our directorate.

Business Travel Focus Groups

Employees who travel for business purposes or book travel for staff or students within the FD are invited to take part in focus groups. These will help gather information for the Climate Plan team to develop a more climate-conscious business travel policy. You can complete the sustainable travel form to take part and find out more about the initiative. Refreshments will be available, and you’ll be directly helping the team shape the work of your Climate Plan.

Taking Action On Net Zero

To help support our ambitious net zero targets and empower staff across the FD to contribute, a new online training course has been launched supported by face-to-face workshops where needed. It takes less than an hour to complete. I encourage you to take the time to explore this. You can self-enrol on the course. Please contact Lorraine Williams-Jones with any questions.

Surveys

The Catering team’s annual survey is open to everyone and asks for your thoughts on our Great Food At Leeds outlets.

Finally, you can have your say to help make campus a safer place by completing the University’s Community Safety and Campus Security Survey.

Other updates:

Success for our chefs

Last week, three chefs from the University of Leeds Catering team took part in TUCO (The University Caterers Organisation) Competitions and all won first position in their categories, a testament to the talent and professionalism of the team. Congratulations to Andy Cornall, Aaron Tong and Rob Hargreaves.

Brian Ford

Brian Ford, Head of Capital Development, will be retiring on 13 June after nearly 17 years at the University. During this time he has overseen projects totalling £1 billion. Most recently he has collaborated with teams throughout the FD on the net zero project, which has been a personal highlight of his time here. I’m very grateful to Brian for everything he has done for the FD and I know you will all join me in wishing him well.

Furniture Showcase

The Teaching Space Support team are holding a Furniture Showcase event on Tuesday 20 May from 9.30am – 2.30pm in the Refectory. Come along and tell them which furniture you think would work best for new teaching rooms and be in with the chance of winning £200 worth of Great Food At Leeds credit. Free tea, coffee and biscuits too! Contact Michael Hern with any questions.

Ann Allen,
Director of Campus Innovation & Development

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – April 2025

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Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on Tuesday 1 April. 

With the Employee Engagement Survey now closed, I am delighted to be able to tell you that the participation rate for the Facilities Directorate was 68% – that’s a 15% increase on 2023 and meets the ambitious target set by the University. Thank you to everyone who filled it in and to everyone who worked so hard to enable staff to take part, in particular Angela Baker, FD Culture & Engagement Lead supported by Prue Griffiths, Communications Manager.

The results will be available early in the summer and you will shortly receive an invitation to the next FD Online Town Hall on 12 June at 10.30am in which we will discuss those results.

I do want to reiterate that your views help us to shape the future and this is a major resource for helping us to understand what you think. Can I also reassure you that the Survey is anonymous; it’s run by an external company – Culture Amp – not the University, and no one here has access to the background data.

The ‘One Leeds’ review is still open for your comments – the deadline is 16 April. I’d urge you to find time to let the University know what you think.

Campus work begins

Our £32 million project to improve the campus this year has officially begun work this week with replacement of outdated audio/visual equipment at laboratories in the L.C. Miall Building – which houses the Faculty of Biological Sciences – including research offices and laboratories. This will make a real difference to learning and teaching.

The project as a whole will create new informal student spaces and upgrade teaching facilities across the campus, as well as see the refurbishment of existing university spaces and entrances, and roofing and cladding work. It’s an essential part of the University’s push to attract new students at a time when competition is fierce, so it’s exciting to see it underway. You can read more about it here.

Thank you to everyone involved in the space utilisation surveys for the Campus Reimagined project, which have now completed. These were needed to get a better understanding of how the campus is being used. The Campus Reimagined work is beginning in earnest with the appointment of Prior + Partners as the masterplanners. More information to come soon!

Net Zero update

I enjoyed reading this summary of our progress in Net Zero work, as featured in last week’s eNews.
As James Dixon-Gough tells us, we’re about to move from planning and feasibility studies into the design and delivery phases for two major projects in the Net Zero Delivery Plan:

  • Upgrade of the ventilation system in the Worsley building to a ‘heat recovery’ system that captures waste heat to reduce heating needs.
  • A new energy centre to heat the Engineering cluster of buildings using electricity.

This is exciting progress and my thanks to all involved.

Budgets for next year

It’s the time of year when we plan financially for the academic year ahead. Your heads of service will keep you updated on progress but I just wanted to respond to questions about staff roles that ceased to exist last year. These roles are not automatically being reinstated: we are working with heads of service to see where roles are critical to the business. The same applies across the whole University.

LinkedIn Learning

A reminder that there are many great opportunities to learn and develop your skills available for free through LinkedIn Leaning. You can read case studies from the University on this page and it’s lovely to see colleagues from Cleaning Services in this video explaining the benefits.

And finally….

It’s great to see our staff being featured and celebrated in the University’s eNews bulletin. You can read about why our Outside Spaces Manager Sean Craven finds the University so inspiring in this piece and how many of our fantastic FD colleagues were mentioned in the International Women’s Day ‘Wall of Women’ on the staff intranet.

Ann Allen,
Director of Campus Innovation & Development

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – March 2025

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Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on Thursday 27 February.  Read more

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – February 2025

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Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on Monday 3 February. 

I hope that your 2025 has started well. January wasn’t without its challenges, including the very bad weather. My thanks to everyone who helped make campus safe during that period.

There is plenty going on in February, including the first Student Offer Days on campus, which many of our teams are involved in. While student recruitment numbers remain challenging for Leeds – as it is for many in the sector – these events are especially important.

Chief Operating Officer (COO) meeting

I was delighted that colleagues from the Facilities Directorate presented at the recent public meeting chaired by Rachel Brealey, the Chief Operating Officer. The FD is part of Rachel’s portfolio, and Mags Massip and Dawn Abel from Cleaning Services had been invited to talk about the success of the Functional English course that colleagues recently took part in.

We also heard from Kitty Binns-Hall and Michael Hern about the achievements of Staff Voice, and from Rob Wadsworth about Campus Reimagined Live. Thanks to all of you for your hard work. It was a wonderful showcase for the FD and attended by over 700 colleagues from around the University.

FD online town hall

We had the next in our series of online town hall meetings on 28 January, entitled ‘Have Your Say’. This was a chance to hear about the University’s Employee Engagement Survey – which goes live on 24 February – Campus Reimagined Live, and Staff Voice. Thank you to everyone who found the time to attend. Please let us know if you have ideas for future themes.

In the event, our new People & Culture Lead, Angela Baker, outlined the work that has been done to address responses to the last Employee Engagement Survey in 2023, and last year’s Pulse Survey. You’ll be hearing more about the Survey over the next month. Heads of service and line managers will be ensuring you all have time to complete it, and I can’t stress enough how important it is to our future. You can hear Rachel Brealey talking about it in this update.

Also in the town hall, Kitty Binns Hall, Lee Bedford and Geraldine Baker updated us on Staff Voice. Applications have closed to join Staff Voice and people can expect to hear from the team this week. If you’ve missed the deadline but would still like to get involved, you can email the Staff Voice team. And you can watch a recording of the town hall here.

Campus Reimagined Live | 10-12 February

It’s nearly here! With free coffee, competitions and more than 25 talks by leading experts, Campus Reimagined Live lands on the University precinct and in the Refectory from 10-12 February.

As Will Reed outlined in the town hall, this is an FD-led initiative and offers colleagues and students the opportunity to feed their ideas into plans for the future of campus. Please go along; your line manager will make sure you have the time.

A huge thank you to the team behind this event including Will Reed, Rosanna Booth and Sue Pimblett and her team.

International Women’s Day/Women’s History Month

The University wants to celebrate inspirational women at the University by creating a digital gallery on the Staff Intranet. You can use this online form to nominate colleagues.

News from our teams

I was delighted to hear about the recognition for Residential Services in the recent Unipol Rate Your Landlord awards. Well done!

  • Winner – Most Improved Landlord award
  • Runner-Up – Best Purpose-Built Student Accommodation Building – Devonshire Hall
  • Runner-Up – Best Purpose-Built Student Accommodation Provider

Print & Mail last week demonstrated their commitment to sustainability by taking part in a tree planting event at Smithills Estates in Bolton, organised by supplier Premier Paper. Scott Fleming, Print Production Manager, helped to plant 600 trees on the Woodland Trust’s largest estate in the country. This is a great effort and my thanks go to Scott. You can read more about the event here.

Finally, those who attended the town hall will have heard that over the coming weeks I am going to be less available while I spend more time with my family. Rob Wadsworth, our Director covering Campus Services, Experiences and Commercial has kindly agreed to step in as my deputy.

This arrangement will be in place initially for six months and he will have delegated authority to lead the Directorate when I am not available. I want to pass on my thanks to Rob for stepping into this role and to all of you who have passed on your best wishes to me.

Regards,

Ann Allen,
Director of Campus Innovation & Development

Scott Fleming from Print & Mail holds a shovel at tree planting event

Print & Mail team plant 600 trees

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On Wednesday 22 January 2025 our Print & Mail team demonstrated their commitment to sustainability by taking part in a tree planting event at Smithills Estates in Bolton organised by supplier Premier Paper. Read more

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – December 2024

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Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on Thursday 28 November. 

As we move towards the end of the year, I am particularly pleased about the shifts I am starting to see in our culture.

When we created the Business Plan in February 2023, we said in its first aim that we would “develop our culture so that our staff can thrive and succeed”.

I also said, in my introduction, that “I strongly believe that we need to work together as one directorate, not a collection of services, and that we have a huge amount to learn from each other and the incredible array of skill and talent across the institution.”

Fast forward to the end of 2024 and we have in place a Staff Voice group, a People & Culture Strategy with work started across its eight workstreams, and an operational excellence team seeking out ideas to improve our services.

All of these groups, I hope, feel empowered to create change and to keep challenging. The culture of an organisation takes a while to embed but I’m very grateful for the progress made.

Staff Voice Open Meeting

Joining Staff Voice is a great way to get involved in positive change. The group are hoping to recruit more Staff Voice champions – you can find out more at an Open Meeting on 15 January, 10am-12pm LT. G23, 28 University Road, which is in the space above the Cleaning Services building. Please email the Staff Voice team with any questions.

Other news from Staff Voice:

  • The group are providing in-person updates at team meetings and away days. Get in touch with a Staff Voice rep if you’d like them to come along.
  • Staff Voice reps have been involved in reviewing the results of the University’s Pulse Survey, helping to improve things where we can.
  • From next year, FD Staff Socials will partly be organised and run by Staff Voice. They will be asking your opinion about what you would like to see happening there.
  • The group are working even more closely with the FD Internal Comms team (Prue Griffiths and Matt Shevlin) to help keep you updated with Staff Voice news and to get support with campaigns.

Save the date: Campus Reimagined Live!

From 10-12 February, the precinct and the Refectory will be the settings for a festival! ‘Campus Reimagined Live!’ will feature talks, workshops, and a host of other activities to enable you to share your thoughts on the future of the campus that we all help to create and maintain.

You’ll be able to read more about this on the Campus Reimagined website when information goes live on 2 December. For now, the ask is to save the date and subscribe to the newsletter.

Have your say

Car parking:

The University is developing a long-term parking policy aligned with our ways of working and Sustainability Strategy. Workshops will be held in early 2025 to gather feedback from colleagues. You can also share your views now. Learn more on the Staff Intranet.

Woodhouse Lane Gateway consultation:

Have your say online as part of the latest public consultation about the proposed Woodhouse Lane Gateway. Consultation closes on 16 December.

Race Equality Charter Staff Survey

This survey goes live on 2 December and is an opportunity for staff to share their experiences working at Leeds to help identify and address the barriers facing Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic students and staff. The data will be used to identify and address any barriers to race equality.

Further information about the survey can be found here.

Congratulations

Residential Services successfully completed an ISO9001 surveillance audit in October. ISO9001 is a globally recognised standard for quality management, and this year the audit scope was extended to include Residence Life for the first time.

Finally….

Don’t forget the Festive FD Staff Social in the Refectory, 3.30pm-5pm on Monday 9 December 2024!

Regards,

Ann Allen,
Director of Campus Innovation & Development

FD bulletin

FD Bulletin – November 2024

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Email sent to all FD staff from Ann Allen, Director of Campus Innovation and Development, on Monday 4 November.

I’m sure you’ll all join me in giving a warm welcome to our new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Shearer West. If you haven’t already, I suggest you find a moment to read her first blog post on the staff intranet or watch the video.

Very early on in her blog, Shearer mentions how inspired she is by the diversity and inclusivity of our community. We know that inclusivity is a University value and an FD value. As such it is core to our People Positive work, and it’s great to see the posters promoting this area, including the learning from the behaviours training that everyone is attending. We’ve had great feedback and there is plenty more activity to come next year.

I was also interested to read the final blog post from our former interim Vice-Chancellor, Hai-Sui Yu. In it, he reviews progress against the six priorities he set out a year ago and key among those is ‘excellence in everything we do’, including research and student education, and implementing the University Strategy.

I want to say again that the Facilities Directorate is key to achieving this excellence. The work that we do directly affects the smooth running of the University and the wellbeing of students, without which our communities cannot achieve and succeed. So thank you for all you do.

Hai-Su also referred to the challenge faced by all universities as we see a decline in the numbers of international students coming to the UK to study. Thanks to skilful planning, Leeds is less affected by this than many other institutions, and we are optimistic about the numbers of home students still choosing Leeds. But we should all keep an eye on cost savings where we can.

Our Way Ahead & the Employee Engagement Survey  

It’s important to remember that our business plan – Our Way Ahead – is the guide for all of us in the FD. The aims still stand and they align with the University’s strategic priorities.

Please do take time to refresh your understanding of it online or check the copies on noticeboards. You can pick up a copy from Prue Griffiths or Matt Shevlin in the Marketing & Comms team too, or they will arrange delivery to your area if you drop them a message.

The way that we deliver the business plan has been shaped by activities like the outputs from the Employee Engagement Survey that ran in 2023, and the recent Pulse Survey. For example, the People & Culture strategy includes a focus on helping staff to be heard: the Staff Voice group is a clear example of this.

Similarly, people wanted to hear more about what was going on across the University and we have started our own town hall meetings. Look out for more of these soon!

You can find more information about the FD and employee engagement in the Employee Engagement Hub on the staff intranet. And look out for details soon about the 2025 survey.

I’ve said many times how much I value collaboration – this is an FD value, a University value, and core to our business plan. Not only do we learn from each other, but we can also work smarter.

‘Working in partnership to transform our core services’ is the topic of the Professional Services Open Meeting tomorrow, 2:05pm-2:55pm, with Rachel Brealey contributing. Please do join the meeting if you can.

Campus Reimagined

I hope that many of you enjoyed seeing the campus and indeed the centre of Leeds lit up by Light Night, a great example of how our spaces can be used to create genuine impact. The Campus Reimagined project is about how we all use campus, and how it inspires our communities. My thanks to those who came to the online town hall on 15 October to find out more. Here’s a link to the recording of the town hall if you missed it.

The Campus Reimagined student survey went live on 28 October and has had a fantastic response rate so far. There will be plenty of opportunities as well for staff and other communities to tell us what they think. If you have any specific thoughts, please do email us at [email protected]

Thanks too to everyone working on the building assets condition survey which will establish a baseline for the campus and feed into Campus Reimagined.

Office Space

People based in the FD building may have been hearing different ideas about how we use our space. The Staff Voice group have made suggestions and the Operational Excellence team have also been looking at opportunities to create better spaces.

I am thrilled that this is an initiative led by your ideas and I look forward to hearing more from both the teams. And don’t worry, there will be an opportunity for everyone to share their thoughts.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Karina Kendrick, who has been appointed Head of Conferences and Events and to Sarah Djuric, who has been appointed as the new College and University Business Officers (CUBO) Residence Life Steering Group Chair.

And finally a date for your diary: the next FD Staff Social will be on Monday 9 December at 3:30pm in the Refectory.

Regards,

Ann Allen,
Director of Campus Innovation & Development