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Dear Colleagues A number of you have queried paragraph 39f of the RAE 2008 Panel criteria and working methods 39. Panels will consider the following individual circumstances to the extent that they are stated to have had a material impact on the individual’s ability to produce the expected volume of research outputs in the assessment period:... f. Other absences which the institution is legally obliged to permit, such as absences for religious observance or absence arising out of involvement as a representative of the workforce. I contacted the RAE team and asked them to say a little more about the statement. Their response is below. "It is definitely not the case that an HEI (or any other employer) is expressly required by legislation to allow employees to take time off for religious observance or certain religious observances. However, we took the view that it is possible that in certain circumstances the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003 [the legislation which forbids discrimination on the grounds of an employee's religion or belief] might in effect require permission to be given for such absences. We therefore included this as an illustrative example of a situation in which the law might have required an HEI to permit an employee to be absent. We were not indicating that such absences would be a legal right in every case, just that in some cases the legal requirement not to discriminate on the grounds of religion/belief combined with individual circumstances might create such a legal right for an individual. Lying behind our approach was the view that we should be alerting HEIs to as many potentially relevant considerations as possible when considering whether absences should be put forward under the "individual circumstances" for consideration by the Panel - bearing in mind that it is then up to HEFCE and the Panel to decide whether such circumstances do need to be considered and whether the absence in question is of sufficient extent to have actually had an impact on the individual's research output." I hope this helps. Best wishes Erica