RATIONALE FOR THE STRUCTURE OF A DISTRIBUTED BRANCH

De Montfort University Branch is a distributed branch having Campus centres in Leicester and Bedford. The Leicester Campus incorporates the Leicester City, Scraptoft and Charles Frears sites; Bedford Campus incorporates Lansdowne and Polhill sites. The two centres are considerable distances apart making communication and meetings difficult to manage.

As the Branch does not employ any paid assistance but rather relies on its officers to manage union affairs alongside demanding full time jobs, it can be seen that this situation does pose problems and makes communication between union officers from the different centres very difficult at times.

It was therefore deemed necessary to have three centres behaving as autonomous units with a Vice-Chair overseeing all union matters pertaining to his/her unit. The Vice-Chair has the responsibility for managing all the union business at their particular centre, where such tasks and responsibilities would usually be split and associated with several different and specific officer posts.

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Page updated: 1/11/2003