Trade Union Facility Time Publication for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. Relevant public sector employers, including HEIs in England and Scotland, are required to publish their Trade Union Facility Time data on an annual basis.
What is Facility Time Publication?
The Trade Union (Facility Time Publication Requirements) Regulations 2017 came into force on 1 April 2017 and places a legislative requirement on relevant public sector employers, including HEIs in England and Scotland, to ‘collate and publish, on an annual basis, a range of data on the amount and cost of facility time within their organisation’.
What is Facility Time?
Facility time is defined in the Regulations as ‘the provision of paid or unpaid time from an employee’s normal role to undertake Trade Union duties and activities as a Trade Union representative’.
What data are we required to publish?
We are required to publish a range of data on the amount and cost of facility time within our organisation, which is shown in Tables 1 to 4 below.
Table 1: Relevant union officials
| What was the total number of your employees who were relevant union officials during the relevant period? |
| Number of employees who were relevant union officials during the relevant period | Full-time equivalent employee number |
| 38 | 36.83 FTE |
Table 2: Percentage of time spent on facility time
| How many of your employees who were relevant union officials employed during the relevant period spent a) 0%, b) 1%-50%, c) 51%-99% or d) 100% of their working hours on facility time? |
| Percentage of time | Number of Employees |
| 0% | 1 |
| 1-50% | 36 |
| 51-99% | 1 |
| 100% | 0 |
Table 3: Percentage of pay bill spent on facility time
| Provide the percentage of the total pay bill spent on facility time, calculated as the (total cost of facility time ÷ total pay bill) x 100 |
| Total cost of facility time | £227,058.62 |
| Total pay bill | £209,732,333 |
| Percentage of the total pay bill spent on facility time | 0.11% |
Table 4: Paid trade union activities
| As a percentage of total paid facility time hours, how many hours were spent by employees who were relevant union officials during the relevant period on paid trade union activities? (Total hours spent on paid trade union activities by relevant union officials during the relevant period ÷ total paid facility time hours) x 100 |
| 12.45% |
At Table 4 we are required to publish how many hours were spent by our trade union officials on paid trade union activities as a percentage of total paid facility time hours. Facility time is paid or unpaid time that our trade union officials receive from their normal role to undertake trade union duties and activities.
Paid trade union duties include, for example, preparing for negotiation or consultation and attending meetings with university managers; accompanying their trade union members to meetings; completing training relevant to their trade union role.
Paid trade union activities means the time taken off with pay by trade union officials to carry out matters beyond the immediate interest or concern of the university. These activities include, for example, attendance at national executive committee meetings and attendance at trade union conferences.
During the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024, the university provided 2579.2 hours of facility time to Unison and 4045.6 hours to UCU, so a total of 6624.8 hours overall.
From the facility time provided to each trade union:
- UCU Northumbria University Branch report they spent 3604 hours (89.08%) on trade union duties and 441.6 hours (10.92%) on trade union activities.
- Unison Northumbria University Branch report they spent 2195.7 hours (85.13%) on trade union duties and 383.5 hours (14.87%) on trade union activities.
The figure of 12.45% shown in Table 4 is the total paid time spent on trade union activities which is calculated as follows:
441.6 hours (UCU) + 383.5 hours (Unison) = 825.1 hours divided by 6624.8 hours (total paid facility time) x 100 = 12.45%
