Academics at the University of Chester have said efforts to replace their offices with communal working spaces will reduce their ability to hold confidential meetings with students and make their roles feel more precarious.
Staff in the English department were told to vacate individual offices over the summer and are being moved into an open-plan area in a newly refurbished building in the city centre, after a similar move for those who work in engineering.
Other departments are also anticipating having to leave offices in future, with staff complaining of uncertainty and a lack of consultation over the situation.
The university said the move reflected new ways of working across the higher education sector and it had created new social and teaching spaces by combining individual offices that it said were less well used post-pandemic. It said it was also making bookable spaces available for meetings.
