According to insiders, three senior members in the school of design, including academic portfolio lead in architecture Simon Herron and senior lecturer Susanne Isa, were suspended with immediate effect in July.
Sources say that another three staff members were also suspended but their employment contracts have now ended and they will not be returning to teach at the university.
It is understood the suspensions related to staff protests against the school’s redundancy and restructure programme earlier this year (Architecture school faces mass job cuts as Greenwich uni plans 300 redundancies), though this has not been confirmed by the university.
One former University of Greenwich tutor told the AJ: ‘The working assumption among staff is that this is linked to opposition to the restructure and concerns over resourcing and student experience.
‘There is deep anxiety that the scale of redundancies will significantly weaken teaching capacity, push workloads on to fewer people, and erode course quality, especially in design studio.’
The source said they feared there would be a reduction in the ratio between tutors and students in the design modules.
In May the AJ reported that lecturers within Greenwich’s architecture school had been left ‘angry and disillusioned’ by plans for a restructure that had put more than 300 university staff at risk, including dozens in the department itself.
The south-east London university informed staff last month of its plans to make 319 redundancies, including all casual staff known as hourly-paid lecturers (HPLs) within the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Greenwich Business School (GBS).
A consultation document for the faculty, sent out to staff in April and seen by the AJ, revealed the university intended to replace 151 HPLs with just 50 academic teaching posts, which would mainly be part-time positions, equating to 17 full-time equivalents.
It also wants to set up a ‘pool’ of associate academic staff for ad-hoc cover, which it is understood will work on zero-hour contracts.
The School of Design, which includes the architecture department and is based at a Heneghan Peng-designed building in Greenwich town centre, was expected to be one of the worst-hit departments. Within architecture, the AJ understands 50 of the 70 teaching staff were set to be made redundant, with 20 then hired back.
A letter, seen by the AJ, heavily criticising the plans was sent to senior management and signed by more than 30 teaching staff in the architecture school. Describing the plans as ‘hugely damaging to the faculty and its students’, the letter includes calculations that suggest the proposals will reduce student teaching time by 40 per cent.
It had warned that the reduction in staff-to-student ratios could mean the courses could come under scrutiny from accrediting bodies such as the RIBA and the Architects’ Registration Board (ARB). ‘There is a real risk that affected courses will lose their accredited status or be put on to special measures,’ it said.
Explaining the rationale for axing HPLs, the consultation said that while the casual lecturers had played an ‘important role’ in providing specialist teaching and cover for sickness absence, they had also been used to ‘meet core teaching needs’.
It added: ‘The faculty considers that, however able and committed individual HPLs are, it is important that core teaching should be provided by members of staff with a longer-term commitment to, and stake in, the university.’
A Greenwich University spokesperson at the time said that although the proposed loss of the 300 roles ‘sound[ed] large’ many of those staff ‘work a relatively small number of hours per year for us’ with some providing ‘just a few guest lectures per year’.
Most of those affected, the university claims, were those employed on fixed-term contacts, due to end last month, although the consultation document states that there were 66 HPLs in the faculty who are ‘considered permanent employees’ and whose contracts are not set to expire.
The university added that its average total staff numbers in 2024 was 3,052 and that the overall number of HPLs was 244, explaining that this equated ‘to approximately 30 full-time staff’.
They told the AJ in May: ‘Like many universities across the UK, the University of Greenwich is facing significant financial challenges outside of our control. These challenges affect the amount of cash we hold, which is what we use to pay our staff and our bills.
The spokesperson concluded: ‘We know that this will feel like a difficult message, but it is essential that we take sensible and proportionate action now to ensure that we continue to be able to offer high-quality teaching and an outstanding student experience.’
In relation to the suspensions, the university said it would ‘never respond to questions asking for detailed personal information in relation to staff members’.
The AJ has contacted Herron but has not received a response.
The latest revelations come as Greenwich and Kent unveiled plans to merge to form the UK’s first ‘super-university’ – a single institution under the name South East University Group, with one vice-chancellor taking power from the start of the 2026 academic year.
The two universities have combined student numbers of nearly 47,000.
The vice chancellors of both institutions told the BBC that the merger had not come as a result of financial pressure, and insisted that it should not be considered a takeover of either university by the other.
Greenwich and Kent describe the plan as an ‘intention to formally collaborate’ under a new model which will bring ‘both universities under one structure’ while enabling each to ‘retain its name, identity and local presence’.