The NUS Mergers Toolkit has been designed to help students' unions lobby for the best deal for representation and resources for a merged students’ union, and more importantly for the best deal for your students across the board.

This document sets out an exciting way in which students’ unions can engage, challenge and shape their college experience through meaningful involvement with the merger process.  NUS believes that a merger can provide a great opportunity to enhance representation and provision for students in the newly merged college.

Mergers can mean good things for students, or bad things – and our experience shows that where students, students’ unions and student governors get involved and understand the process, good things can happen – better support, timetables, facilities and representation.

To help you do this, NUS has designed this toolkit, and can support you locally to make the decisions that are best for your students, with the right resources to ensure you can navigate any potential merger at your college.

This toolkit is made up of a number of different sections.  To download these just follow the links below.

• Mergers toolkit flowchart
• Mergers document 1: Introduction
• Mergers document 2: Why is this happening
• Mergers document 3: The merger process
• Mergers document 4: Criteria for a merger
• Mergers document 5: What's my role in all of this?
• Mergers document 6: Do you support the merger or not?
• Mergers document 7: Protecting your students
• Mergers document 8: Dealing with a merger
• Mergers toolkit A: Speaking to your students
• Mergers toolkit B: Engagement with college meetings
• Mergers toolkit C: SU development toolkit
• Mergers toolkit D: Working with trade unions