The Role and Responsibilities of Promotion Panel Chairs

At each stage of the process, and in addition to ensuring the business of each Promotion Panel is carried out in accordance with this guidance, the Chair is required to ensure that:

• Each application is assessed against the published Assessment Criteria; 
• Applications are assessed to check whether the appropriate academic office/post has been applied for (and may request a revised application to be submitted in time for consideration; such cases are exceptional and must be clearly justified);
• The Institutional Statement is sufficiently detailed and contains sufficient explanation. 
• Panel members are aware of School/Institution Indicators of Excellence and understand that Indicators of Excellence are suggestive in nature and non-exhaustive; not all indicators will be relevant to all applicants;   
• Panel members declare any conflicts of interest and agree the appropriate action to take to address them.  It is recommended that in circumstances where a member has a personal relationship with an applicant, or they could be perceived to benefit from the promotion of an applicant (e.g. they are joint applicants for a research grant for which the decision is pending), they excuse themselves from the meeting for the duration of the discussion about that applicant;
• Appropriate consideration is given to any declared Contextual Factors and advice is sought from the relevant HR Business Partnering Team in advance of the meeting as appropriate; 
• Appropriate consideration is given to applications where the subject area crosses Promotion Panel boundaries (see Multidisciplinary Applications here); 
• Prior to concluding business, panels must review and consider the scoring of applications holistically, to ensure they have applied the scoring methodology consistently across all applications;
• The minutes and Assessment Records of each panel meeting are an accurate record, include the justifications for the panel’s decisions, reflect the scores awarded and are approved by each member.  The Assessment Record should be a summary of the panel’s assessment and the recommendation, and should not include detail on the contents of the application; and
• All necessary action is taken following approval of the minutes.