About the Regional Offices

What we do?

The general rule is that literally whatever the idea, query, problem, or project the regional office can help. There is nothing that NUS doesn’t know about Students’ Unions/Guilds and the regional office should be your first point of contact with NUS. Specifically the Regional Office team exists to:

• Act as NUS’ local representatives and to promote the work and campaigns of NUS throughout the region, providing support and materials to Unions/Guilds to anable them to become actively involved in such campaigns.
• Provide professional advice and support to elected officers and the Union/Guild for which they are responsible. Regional staff are employed to be both generalists and specialists in Students’ Union related issues. Examples of this include Charity Law, consititutional issues, trustee responsibilities, and democratic and organisational structures.
• Help Union/Guild officers with specific organisational problems/issues by providing specific support and guidance. For example the Regional Office has been involved in the recruitment of numerous senior Union/Guild staff in the region, facilitated the creation of a number of strategic/business plans, and provided the General Manager appraisal process for a number of Unions/Guilds.
• Provide quality bespoke training to members Unions/Guilds through in-house, residential, and regional training courses. These include officer induction, teambuilding, objective setting, mid-year review, officer handover, and many more knowledge and skill areas.
• Help in the democratic operation of Unions/Guilds, whether it be the running of elections, UGM/AGMs, referenda, Union/Guild Council, or Executive meetings.
• Act as a referral point for not only other NUS departments and Unions/Guilds regionally and nationally, but also other relevant organisations such as HEFCE, QAA, AMSU, trade unions, the media, local government/MPs, and other relevant organisations.

How we do it?

Working together, achieving the best results:

• The regional officers spend most of their time visiting member Unions/Guilds in order to provide the services and support detailed above. The job is very much ‘hands-on’ and Union/Guild officers and the regional office benefit from having a close working relationship with regular contact. More than any other NUS department, the regional office operates best with an effective two-way communicative relationship between itself and student officers.
• We hold regular regional meetings to encourage the sharing of ideas and practices amongst officers and Unions/Guilds. These can be based around officer positions, specific campaign issues, consultation and briefing days on the work of NUS, and any other matter that requires the region to work together.
• Regional staff are kept up to date with all current issues relevant to Unions/Guilds through regular team meetings, and briefings at NUS HQ in London. This enables us to provide the best and most speedy response to queries.
• Regional staff are also required to attend regular training/personal development sessions to enable them to provide a quality and relevant service. These include topics such as Advanced Training the Trainer (delivered by the CIPD), mental health training, and advanced facilitation techniques.
• We develop close working relationships with General Managers and other senior Union/Guild staff in order for us to support the development of Unions/Guilds at an organisational level.
• We provide a 2 day residential training course for all the main HE institutions within the west midlands region during the summer hand-over period. We then respond to training/facilitation requests from Unions/Guilds and create and deliver training as required. This training is not exclusively for student officers, for example we can facilitate strategic planning days for Executive/Senior Staff.

Officers that we help and support on a regular basis:

Any students’ union officers, full or part-time that seek assistance with any issue that they may encounter in undertaking their roles.

Internally, we work closely with all NUS departments in order to be able to deal with all NUS related queries efficiently and effectively.

Contact us via the details found in The Guide Online, which is currently located on our nusonline.co.uk site.