What is Imperial College UCU and what can I find on this website?

ucu.imperial.ac.uk is the website of the Imperial College branch of the University and College Union (UCU), the UK trade union for university and college staff. It is a branch-level site rather than a national one: it publishes this branch's positions, negotiations and consultations affecting staff at Imperial College London. It is aimed at Imperial's UCU members and at anyone following labour relations at the college, and it is written in English (en-GB).

What the site is

The site describes itself as the "Webpage for the Imperial College branch of the University and College Union." That means the content reflects the branch's own activity and viewpoint, not UCU's national policy pages. If you are looking for national pay claims, membership rules or legal advice, those sit with UCU nationally; this site covers what the Imperial branch is doing.

What you can find there

The material on the site falls into a few recurring categories:

• Pay negotiations. The site has a dedicated campaigns section for pay negotiations, and posts that report on joint trade union meetings about pay. One post covers a 2025–26 pay meeting and sets out the branch's reading of management's position, including arguments that a 4.5% increase in salary costs is explained by normal, predictable factors, that an email confirms an increase in overseas student numbers and therefore resources, and that management used incompatible financial scenarios during negotiations.
• Job family and title consultations. A post on a joint trade union teaching and research job family title consultation (autumn 2026) reproduces the full proposal UCU put to the University Management Board, notes that UMB's own set of titles adopted very few of UCU's suggestions, and states that these titles would form the basis of negotiations with the joint trade unions in September 2026.
• Branch positions and campaign updates. Posts are filed under categories such as campaigns and pay negotiations, so you can follow a single thread rather than reading everything chronologically.

Who it is for

The primary audience is Imperial College staff who are UCU members or are considering joining, plus journalists, researchers and other observers of higher education labour issues. The content assumes some familiarity with Imperial's structures — the University Management Board, joint trade union negotiations, job families — so readers outside the college may need to read a few posts to pick up the context.

How to use it

If you want to know the branch's stance on a current dispute, start with the campaigns category and read the most recent post in that thread. If you want the branch's own proposals rather than its commentary, look for posts that attach or reproduce documents, such as the titles proposal put to UMB. Because the site publishes branch positions, treat each post as an argued case with a stated position rather than a neutral record of agreed outcomes — where a post says negotiations will follow, the outcome is not yet on the page.

The site does not present itself as a membership sign-up or payment portal, and no pricing or login terms are stated in the material available, so do not assume anything about cost or access from the site alone.