MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Resource distribution systems
Delving more deeply, however, some of the issues at the root of the
problem are perceived:-
I'd like more control over the budget. He gives us a budget but
there's not much I can do with that in the sense that if I said to
the executive members, well you are not to have three meetings
a year, then that is extremely difficult because of the power
relationship there. But there is not much visibility of the budget
and the budgeting process. What is missing is perhaps more
authority to enforce it. The weakness in it is the top up system. I
think what undermines it is that if you have a budget and
different interest groups get top ups, it undermines the whole
bloody thing. Instead of holding to it and going to my executive
and saying about the budget, they would say well they will get it
anyway so why should we bother. So it is undermined a bit by
that sort of topping up. And then the financial control of the
union, the transparency of the financial control of the union is
one area where there is need for a lot of change. D is trying to
put more structure into the budgetary process but on the other
hand he is fighting a political culture where access to money is
patronage and it gets very difficult really. And then again you
have got the inconsistencies and lack of transparency.
(Interviewee G)
At a micro level, activists are to be brought into the system of
budgetary control:-
The finances of this union -- and I don't know how the finances
of other unions work but I am going to speak to other unions --
are almost, there is a mystique about the money. Nobody
knows what it gets spent on but they make decisions about what
it gets spent on. Which has got to stop. We have set up a new
committee called the Budget Scrutiny Committee which is
separate from the Finance Committee which is literally going to
go through the bills and say, "what was this £2000 payment for,
for this consultancy? Show us what we got?" Some head of
research or some education officer will send you a bill -- I have
got this university to do this research for me, you owe them
£1700. I never asked them for it, I want to know what you have
got for your £1700. You will come to me. You will explain what it
is you want, why you have got to go to that university, why you
can't go on the Internet, why we can't use research. The
processes are going to change now, which they have never
done in the past. As a result of that, people just spend money.
(Interviewee N)
To achieve better financial control, new systems are planned:-
We're going to devise a software system that enables need to
interrogate membership records so I can predict so that when a
cheque arrives from the Post Office or BT, we can say to them,
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