UNIVERSITY workers and students have missed mortgage payments, fallen into rent arrears and ran up huge credit card bills because they have not been paid properly for months.
Edinburgh University staff have been left to pick up the tab to cover their own expenses – running into thousands of pounds for some, it has been said – because the institution’s new payments system is not fit for purpose.
It has led to calls for the university’s head to resign over the scandal, as the 439-year-old institution faces the prospect of a collective grievance demanding recompense and compensation from its staff, the Sunday National can reveal.
The finance system at the centre of the chaos – called People and Money – has resulted in the university being blacklisted by some suppliers because of late payments, with a union representative claiming most couriers covering the capital have point-blank refused to make deliveries to its campus because of non-payment.
The University and Colleges Union (UCU) branch at Edinburgh has said they have received more than 700 responses to a survey among its members who have experience with the payment system and shared some excerpts with this paper.
One respondent said they had loaned a student £600 to cover their rent payments while another said it was one element contributing to a “perfect storm” which they warned could trigger a “mass staff exodus”.
Another person who contributed to UCU’s staff survey said: “I have found the implementation very stressful.
“At times at work, I have been in tears due to the frustrations of trying to navigate a system and do my job where I felt completely and utterly hopeless.
“I have worked for 40 years and have never felt like that, ever.”
One claimed the payment calamity could ruin the university’s global standing, saying: “Even if the system ever works as intended, I believe it will cripple our ability to run internationally renowned research groups.”
Another added: “This leaves us with the only option of buying products from our own money and trying to get this expensed afterwards, leaving us with a hole in our own finances which, at a time when many postgraduate researchers are not being paid their stipends is utterly unacceptable.”
One said research had been paused because of problems expensing supplies while another highlighted “nonsensical” rules around procurement which they said meant lab staff had to obtain the permission of two professors to buy a new pen.
The university has apologised after the issues were highlighted earlier this week and said it was working to ensure “this will not happen again” but gave no indication those affected would be compensated or the steps it was taking to rebuild relationships with suppliers.
But Jonny Dennis, a UCU representative at Edinburgh, said staff were concerned university management did not fully grasp how badly the fiasco had affected staff and students.
He said: “It’s this gargantuan project, affecting the whole university and we’ve looked at the sort of people they’re trying to hire at the moment to try and mop up the mess and they’re paying salaries well below the market rates.
“They’re trying to do the whole system on the cheap. They’ve had almost two years of problems being caused by the system because it was implemented in stages, but it’s only in the past two months that it’s gotten seriously bad and it’s just completely overwhelmed the finance systems.
“There is not enough staff on the ground to be able to process all these claims, it was just really poorly executed and now there are members of the university senate that are planning on asking the principal to resign over this or the vice-chancellor.”
Dennis said he was aware of one researcher working for the university in Africa who had been unable to pay guides, straining relations with locals, who ended up running up a credit card bill of around £3,500 so they could be paid.
Another instance saw scientists working in the Arctic unable to send samples home, he said.
Dennis said: “There were people not able to order PPE for the last two months, gloves and lab coats, people in veterinary medical schools were not able to order things they needed for animal welfare.
“There was a scheduled shutdown of procurement for the two months and that was extended.
“In that time, there was no ordering besides emergencies. But even then, when it went back up, there were all sorts of problems like orders weren’t being sent to suppliers properly, payments weren’t being processed correctly, things were taking weeks to place an order, where it used to take a few minutes.
“Then because of non-payment of bills, there was so much chaos going on, the university ended up being blacklisted by all sorts of suppliers.
“Pretty much no couriers serving Edinburgh will now deal with Edinburgh University.”
He added: “It has caused major financial hardship to people.
“There are people that haven’t been able to pay their rents so they’ve gone into debt with their landlords, or they’ve had to borrow money off their families if they’re fortunate enough to have families that are able to support them. That was another theme we saw that people from lower-income or less-developed countries that didn’t have that kind of family money available.
“There has been people who have had to delay starting university, people who have dropped out of uni – that was one story that I read in the survey responses.”
The union has said it has set a deadline of the end of the month for the university to square up with those to whom money is owed or they will launch a collective grievance against the management – seeking recompense and compensation because of the ripple effects of missing payments.
Dennis added: “We’re also looking to get compensation awarded to people – there are stories of people missing out on mortgage reapplications or revaluations, they were trying to get rentals, they’ve gone into significant debt that has accrued interest.
“It’s not really enough for the uni to say ‘oops’ and give people the money that they were due months ago.
“We think that there has to be some sort of compensation.”
An Edinburgh University spokesperson said: “The university recently implemented a new finance system, which required us to interrupt financial processing for a period over summer to allow us to test the system and transfer huge volumes of data.
“This has unfortunately led to a backlog of some payments.
“We have increased the number of people in our finance team who are working tirelessly to process the increased volume of outstanding invoices. The university prides itself in fostering good relationships with suppliers, and we are doing our best to ensure all payments are processed as quickly as possible.
“We apologise to any of our students, staff or suppliers who are experiencing a delay in payment.
“We know there have been stipend and student payment issues and these have been escalated to the highest level to be resolved as quickly as possible.
“We are acutely aware of the impact that this is having on some of our staff and students, and we will continue to keep them informed with progress. This week, we held a number of open meetings to listen to concerns from our community and provide an update on work that is being undertaken to address their issues.
“We apologise to all those affected and are working to ensure this will not happen again.”
