An update from the Vice-Chancellor

Hello all

Just a quick note as we head into the weekend.

Firstly, I wanted to apologise for sending a message to you all on Sunday evening and for breaking into your weekend. It is never our intention to write to staff during your own time but unfortunately events sometimes overtake us and the message from the government last Sunday may have been open to interpretation. 

We didn't want anyone thinking that they should return to their normal workplace on Monday morning.

In these unusual circumstances, clarity of our communication is really important and whilst I know most of you are able to conduct university business remotely and have adapted your homes to accommodate your continuing work, there are some of our colleagues who are not able to work from home. And that's okay. 

Those of you who can only do your job on university premises will be required to help bring us all back safely so don't worry. Everyone is important at LJMU, we are in this together and we all have a role to play in our recovery plan.

We have now started a number of work streams to bring the university back together and I can't emphasise enough how complex this is going to be. We have a campus with buildings of all shapes and sizes and every one of those buildings will have to be made safe for social distancing and so that we can reassure our students and our staff that we can operate effectively whilst protecting everyone in our community.

Naturally this task falls to a very small team within the Incident Management Team. The priority at the moment is mapping our buildings and working through signage and orientation to manage the flow around our estate. 

We are all now familiar with the supermarket model and we have all adapted to how we do our shopping but we can't simply adopt the same principles. So, to follow our messages from Sunday, can I ask you all to bear with us as we work through to the first phase of reopening parts of our campus. 

Many of you, perhaps realising now that we are working remotely for a longer period of time, are beginning to ask for individual access to buildings to retrieve items and kit. Whilst I appreciate why this may be important to you on a personal level I'm afraid at this time this not possible. At this time we are focused and dedicated to our recovery plan or ongoing COVID-related research. I'm sorry about this.

As we work through the next few weeks, Mark and I will report on the progress of the work streams and keep you updated on a regular basis via this bulletin, all staff emails and through ELT and the Directorate.

On a lighter note in this very serious time, for those of you who have followed my weekly updates you may be interested to know that despite continuing my activity, my weight has increased due to regular visits to the fridge and eating (unhealthy) snacks between zooming and Microsoft teaming!

Finally, as ever, thank you for everything you are doing to keep the university running so smoothly and for your commitment to keeping our students engaged with their studies. I really appreciate and value this.

I hope you all have a relaxing and enjoyable weekend and I will update you again next week.

Ian