Prospect at our best in 2025

Prospect General Secretary Mike Clancy, reflects back on the progress that has been made against a challenging political and economic backdrop, in particular how Prospect has delivered for its members across our sectors.

As the year draws to a close, I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved together.

Progress against a challenging backdrop

Globally, 2025 has been a year of turmoil and instability, with ongoing conflict in Ukraine and Gaza, the chaos of President Trump’s second term, and little significant progress in tackling the climate crisis.

Meanwhile, the UK has faced significant challenges and political instability; it’s been a rocky year for the new government, punctuated by a tough Budget delivered against the backdrop of the growing threat of far-right populism.

But there have also been positive developments, many of them secured with the help of Prospect’s campaigning influence.

The Government published its long-awaited industrial strategy, recognising the vital contribution of the sectors our members work in, including energy, defence, the creative industries, tech, and life sciences.

The Employment Rights Bill has also been making its way through parliament over the past year and finally passed this week, bringing us a step closer to the landmark introduction of new employee rights, and a shift in the balance of power towards workers and unions.

New nuclear investments and putting jobs at the heart of the clean energy transition

This year finally brought the Final Investment Decision for Sizewell C, alongside other investments in new nuclear, that will bring much-needed stability and security for our members. Gemma Moss, an EDF apprentice and Prospect member, met the Prime Minister at Sizewell to talk about the significance of the new funding.

Gemma Moss with the Prime Minister

We welcomed the Clean Energy Jobs plan as a vital first step in fulfilling the jobs potential offered by the clean energy transition. And we launched Climate Jobs UK with the GMB Union, calling for a jobs-first clean energy transition.

An important year for members in our Bectu sector

The Government recognised the creative industries as a key sector for driving growth and published the Creative Industries Sector Plan – one of eight plans for the UK’s high-growth industries. We secured a significant lobbying victory, with the Government committing to appoint a ‘Freelance Champion’ to act as a voice for freelancers at the heart of government.

Bectu’s Big Survey roundtable

Our members’ views and experiences are vitally important to shape our campaigning and lobbying work. Bectu’s Big Survey, the largest ever survey of behind-the-scenes creative industry workers, laid bare significant challenges still facing the sector, which we presented to decision-makers in parliament. We’ll continue to use the insights to drive our 2026 campaigning.

Improving conditions in heritage

Heritage branches came together through vibrant sector executive meetings at heritage centres across the country, building solidarity and shared campaigning, and we gathered thousands of responses from workers, giving us a clearer picture of the main challenges. The evidence is already driving our campaign work on workload, pay, and terms and conditions.

Standing up for our members in defence

Early in the year we published our plan to help boost growth in the defence and aerospace sector. Some of our recommendations were reflected in the Government’s announcement that new defence procurement rules will be introduced prioritising British ships and British steel.

We also secured an agreement to have new group level discussions with Babcock International Group. This represents a significant and positive development for Prospect, enabling us to better stand-up for members at Babcock, and we have argued for such an arrangement for some time.

At TUC Congress this year I was clear that Prospect is proud of our defence members and the work they do to maintain our security in the face of aggression from Russia and other threats.

Strengthening our identity in public services

This year we finessed our branding as the voice for specialists in public services, to better articulate our presence and help grow our influence.

We also surveyed members to ensure our lobbying reflects their priorities for the future of the Civil Service. We’ve increased direct engagement with government and thanks to member debates at our 2025 sector conference, we have begun to shape progress towards a new pay and reward approach that better recognises specialist expertise and fair progression.

Georgia Gould MP was guest speaker at the Prospect Public Service Sector Conference held at the Park Plaza, Victoria, London on 18 June 2025

Standing together in tech and telecoms

We have continued to grow our tech branch, raising diversity in tech and issues relating to skilled workers visas with the government. After an unsatisfactory pay review this year, members across BT, EE and Openreach have stood together for fairness and pay via our RESPECT campaign, and have also developed practical tools to record work hours and keep track of unpaid overtime.

 A new chapter for aviation

This year we developed our aviation group into an established sector. As our air traffic controllers branch celebrated its 75th birthday, we’re also looking to the future of aviation and raised possible changes to the National Air Traffic Services defined contribution pension scheme and issues surrounding regulation at a recent trade union roundtable with the new minister.

Delivering for you

All of these successes build on many wins at branch level, and the hundreds of members we have helped with personal cases throughout the year, resulting in over £1.6m secured in damages for members.

I’ve always believed that the ultimate test of a union is in membership numbers. And I’m proud that we have had another year of strong membership growth, taking us beyond 162,000 members for the first time in our history. This includes our best ever Union Week for new joiners; a huge testament to the organising efforts of our officials, reps and members.

Prospect continues to grow year on year, even while overall trade union membership declines. We should be proud of this and not take it for granted.

We are growing because we are delivering for members, and we are able to continue to deliver for members in part because we are growing. It is a virtuous cycle that I hope we can continue, especially as we look towards the new opportunities for growth presented by the Employment Rights Act.

My focus now is already on next year and the challenges and opportunities it will bring for the union.

For now though, I want to send my deep gratitude to our staff, reps and members who have made 2025 a success, and who I know will continue to do so in the months and years ahead.

I also want to extend our thanks to those members who will be working as normal over the coming weeks, from air traffic controllers, to power engineers, to theatre and museum staff.

I hope you have a happy and peaceful Christmas and I look forward to building on our success together in 2026.