The Vice-Chancellor’s Committee Meeting

The role of the Vice-Chancellor’s Committee (VCC) is to moderate between the SCs to ensure that a consistent standard has been achieved for all applications.  Therefore, the VCC will receive the rank order of applicants for each office/post and consider the documentary evidence, deciding whether any adjustments in evaluation are necessary. 

Each member of the VCC has a responsibility to ensure its business is conducted in accordance with this guidance; the Chair of each committee has a particular role in this regard. Each committee member, and those attending the committee meetings, should ensure that:

  • they are familiar with this guidance (the Chair will ask each member for confirmation at the start of the meeting); 
  • in considering the applications, they adhere to the Assessment Criteria and do not import additional considerations into their evaluations which may be construed as additional criteria; 
  • they treat Indicators of Excellence as being suggestive in nature and non-exhaustive; not all indicators will be relevant to all applicants; 
  • they are aware of their responsibilities relating to equality, diversity and inclusion, including the potential risk of unconscious bias, and have completed the appropriate training (see Key Principles) to ensure their considerations are collective, fair, impartial and evidence-based;
  • they consider whether allowance should be made for Contextual Factors; and
  • they state any declarations of interest to enable the committee to agree appropriate action to be taken before consideration of applications.

The Chairs of the SC, assisted by the respective external members, will present in turn their SC assessments, explaining for which applicants and why promotion was supported and not supported. The VCC will focus its discussion on:

  • applications which were considered and scored to be either on, just above or just below the line for promotion;
  • applications where the SC reached a different conclusion to the FC, including those where significant adjustments were made to the scores; and
  • applications with non-standard aspects, which may have caused difficulty. 

If there is complete agreement with previous committee evaluations, banding and scorings, no further comment is necessary. However, where there is not complete agreement further comments must be recorded. Reference may be made in the minutes to comments contained in referees’ statements but will be anonymised.

The VCC will then make its recommendations to the GB concerning applicants that should be successful.  The GB receives these recommendations and confirms the cases for promotion.

Any material submitted that is not in accordance with the guidance should be returned, either to the applicant or Secretary of the previous committee as appropriate, for necessary revision and re-submission in advance of the date on which the agenda and documents are to be circulated to members of the relevant committee.

The Secretary of the VCC will circulate the documentation for the meeting electronically in good time in advance of the meeting. The documentation should comprise: 

  • an agenda;
  • a link to this guidance; 
  • the complete documentation for each applicant from the SCs; 
  • signed minutes of the SC and FC with summary lists of evaluations and rankings agreed by the SC for all applicants in relation to each academic office applied to.