Leeds University Union’s (LUU) vision is for every student to love their time at Leeds and this year we have achieved great strides against it, particularly with our typically ‘hard to reach’ student groups. We have improved our diversity statistics in many areas of our work to ensure our vision is relevant across a range of students.

Our successful stakeholder engagement works continues to go from strength to strength. This year saw the redevelopment of our community strategy on which we consulted various members and groups within the community through a series of events before publically launching our approach. This created buy-in and an appetite to promote our strategy amongst key groups in the community.

Our work with colleagues at the University has grown and developed into being a fundamental element of our stakeholder engagement work. We have been working closely with senior academics on various areas including our elections and the NSS. This year saw us personally present our Impact Report to more University colleagues than ever before, and gave us a great opportunity to position ourselves as being relevant and a key partner in the University’s efforts to recruit and support students.

LUU’s four year strategic plan has been used as a blueprint across the SU sector and more widely within not-for-profit networks. Our objectives and Key Performance Indicators are monitoring continuously using our software solution Outcome Manager, and our student feedback mechanisms. Our commitment to diversity is recognised as part of our strategic plan, as we have objectives and work streams associated with meeting the needs of all our members regardless of circumstances. Success in this particular area include:

• LUU’s fortnight of cultural celebrations, World Unite Festival. The objective of the festival is to bring students from all backgrounds together and celebrate diversity on campus and in the city. There was a wider variety of event than ever before including Chinese New Year celebrations, film screenings, food festivals and a global issues forum. The festival culminated with our annual Cultural Showcase which attracted 300 students to see dance, music and fashion shows. 96% of attendees rated the events excellent, very good or good (surpassing our target of 86%). 68 different countries were represented at the festival.
• A new addition to our events calendar was an ‘Around the World’ children’s party; one of three parties that we held for students with dependents this year. 70 children and their families attended, with children’s ages ranging from 11 weeks to 12 years and there was an equal amount of home and international students in attendance too.

Much of our success can be attributed to our strategic plan and our ability to focus on the wins for students. It is for this reason that many other SUs approach us for strategic advice and support, which is great as it ensures the quality of the SU movement is continually growing as we share best practice between us. We are equally grateful for the support other unions provide to LUU, and are all the stronger for it.

Student feedback is so important to us, and we are constantly looking for ways to react and respond to our members’ needs. Through our annual member survey ‘Rate Your Union’ we monitor how we are serving our members and how we are meeting our strategic aims. Our 2013 survey showed us that 93% of students feel that LUU is contributing positively to their time at University and 97% said we cater for them a little/a lot.

Social media is increasingly fundamental to our two-way communications with our members and enables us to monitor the student conversation as it happens. We are developing a four year digital strategy and increasingly monitoring what students need from us using this channel.

A great example of this is our newly opened Salad Box, a new salad and sushi bar created out of the social media reaction from our members when they heard the news that a sushi shop was about to close on campus. We heard what they wanted to replace it and built one within four weeks. Members have been flooding through the Salad Box’s doors ever since!

Our contribution to the student experience is evident through our members increased interest in activities, member services and democracy. Our Give it a Go programme is increasingly popular as are our memberships to clubs and societies as we continue to broaden the experiences and activities on offer. Our Advice Centre has seen its busiest year to date, with queries being up over 30% year on year.

Student engagement in our democracy is also at an all-time high. Idea numbers at our forums are up and our annual Exec election – the Leadership Race - continued to go from strength to strength. Our voter turnout reached 37% and we achieved our highest ever total of 11,383 individual voters – making it the biggest SU election in the country. For us, this is not just a big statistic but a reflection of how engaged Leeds students are in representation and democracy as a whole. Again, we improved the diversity of participants with both candidates and voters. In Halls we re-launched our Residents’

Committees as Hall Execs and over 170 students stood in the elections and over 22% of residents voted; an increase from 14% last year. Through being more accountable and from receiving more LUU support, these Execs held 117 socials in total and truly transformed the experiences of students predominately in their first year at Leeds.

We continue to campaign tirelessly for the things that matter to our members, big wins this year include; a freeze on our student bus fares around the city ensuring they stay at the £1 price point we fought so hard to achieve. Seeing the value in this scheme, other routes have started to promote a £1 fare to our students showing our influence outside of our immediate area and networks. We’ve also claimed a victory for our Research Postgraduates who teach, as the University have agreed to recognise them as workers with worker rights – a campaign that’s been on-going for over two years!

We have continued to improve our environmental impact work. We achieved gold in the Green Impact Awards for the second consecutive year and, by winning the overall Green Impact Award, scoring higher than any other SU in the category. In addition, we also received the Epona Ethical Procurement for the Hidden Café, and the Cooperative International Development award for Leeds RAG. We’ve also started to transform our community representation based on students who commute to University across the whole city (often from as far as Sheffield!).

We feel the last 12 months have been significant and magnificent for student experience and engagement at LUU and we continue to be extremely proud of the work of our staff, volunteers and student exec members put in to ensure each and every one of our members can love their time at Leeds.