3 days ago
Teachers' £19m trade union away days funded by taxpayer
Trade union 'away days' for teaching staff are costing the UK taxpayer almost £19m a year, figures show.
Analysis of Government data by the TaxPayers' Alliance shows some education staff are spending all of their working hours undertaking activities for their trade union, known as 'facility time'.
All public sector organisations that employ more than 49 full-time staff are required to submit data on the use of facility time in their organisation. Activities covered can include bargaining over pay and planning strike action. Strike days are unpaid and counted separately.
Teachers' trade unions include the National Education Union (NEU), NASUWT (The Teachers' Union), and National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT).
The NEU, the UK's largest teaching union, launched 593 days of local strike action last year, representing a seven-fold jump over the past five years.
In total, the UK taxpayer spent £18.9m on facility time last year for staff across 631 education bodies, including schools and universities.
This is up around 4 per cent on 2023, when the taxpayer bill for facility time in the education sector reached £18.1m.
The Open University recorded the highest facility time bill in 2024, with almost £600,000 spent on fulfilling trade union roles in working hours.
Universities in financial crisis
Staff at Russell Group universities were among those given taxpayer-funded time away from their jobs to carry out union work last year, costing more than £1m in total.
That includes nearly £439,000 spent on facility time for staff at the University of Manchester, £350,000 at the University of Leeds and £297,000 at the University of Edinburgh.
At 55 education organisations, some staff spent 100 per cent of their working hours on their trade union duties, the figures show.
Meanwhile, six universities had multiple staff working all of their working hours on trade union activities, including the University of Bristol, where five employees were recorded as spending 100 per cent of their time as union representatives.
The higher education sector is grappling with a worsening financial crisis that has pushed around 43 per cent of universities into deficit last year, according to Telegraph analysis.
Baroness Smith, the universities minister, told The Telegraph in May that many universities have 'lost sight over their responsibility to protect public money' as they fail to rein in spending despite demanding support from the Government.
Growing trade union activity among teachers has also pushed up the bill for facility time in schools, according to the TaxPayers' Alliance analysis.
Multi-academy trusts spending heavily on facility time last year included the Wessex Multi Academy Trust, which spent more than £261,000, and the Kemnal Academies Trust, which spent nearly £197,000.
The Telegraph revealed last month that local walkouts by school staff have surged in recent years, resulting in almost 600 days of lost teaching in 2024.
Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'Parents will be dismayed to learn that while classrooms sit empty and strikes disrupt children's education, taxpayers are still picking up the bill for teachers to spend lesson time on union duties.
'Facility time is a luxury the education sector can't afford. With schools losing hundreds of teaching days to walkouts and universities deep in financial trouble, every penny should go to front-line teaching, not subsidising union activism.
'Ministers must take a firm stance and ensure that taxpayer-funded institutions prioritise students' needs instead of funding teaching staff who spend their time on union duties.'
Taxpayers have funded trade union facility time since the Employment Protection Act of 1975. Additional regulations that came into force in 2017 now require public sector bodies to publish information on such spending.
Esther McVey, a Cabinet Office minister in the previous Conservative government, wrote to councils with high spending levels last year and urged them to consider introducing a cap on facility time.
She called on local authorities to take lessons from the civil service, which saw spending on facility time drop from 0.26 per cent of total pay costs in 2012 to 0.05 per cent in 2024, which she claimed 'shows how it is lawful and possible to achieve this'.
