Defiant lecturers have rejected plans to make them disclose details about their love lives.

Bradford University has drawn up a draft code of conduct that would force lecturers to tell their bosses if they form relationships with another member of staff.

If the proposals become concrete it will become only the second university in the country to demand personal details about relationships between its staff.

A Bradford University spokesman said the plan had been put forward to ensure a conflict of interests was avoided over internal promotions.

The Bradford document will now go out to consultation with unions, but the Association of University Teachers has already dismissed the idea, branding it "intrusive."

"It places in doubt the integrity and professionalism of our members," said Adrian Pierce, president of the Bradford branch of the Association of University Teachers.

"I don't believe that the university wants to be a Big Brother and nosy, but that's how it is being perceived.

"People feel that it is intrusive and that it's going to be a list of who is doing what with whom."

Another lecturer, who asked to remain anonymous, said he was angry about the proposals.

"It feels like they do not trust us to behave properly. We are very angry and hurt about it," he said.

Guidelines about student and staff relationships have long been in place at the city centre campus which mean that any lecturer who starts a personal relationship with a student is removed from supervising and assessing them.

In the same way, monitoring relationships between staff is designed to prevent allegations of favouritism.

Great Horton Road neighbours, Bradford and Ilkley Community College, have no such code of conduct - they ask only that staff engaging in relationships with students tell their line managers.

A spokeswoman for Bradford University said the guidelines were at a very early stage and no firm action has yet been decided.

"The new document is now about to go through a formal internal consultation process with trade unions, the student union and others," she said.

"New guidelines are more comprehensive and include not just staff-student and staff-staff, but any relationship where there might be a potential conflict of interest."

Director of Bradford Chamber of Commerce Sandy Needham said she had never come across any local company asking its employees to divulge information about relationships they were having with colleagues.

"It is not something I have ever come across officially," said Mrs Needham, who has been in charge of the chamber representing more than 1,000 companies in the district for 18 months. "The trend nowadays is to ask for less personal information rather than more."

She admitted personal relationships between colleagues can cause problems, particularly if other members of staff believe an advantage in the promotion stakes has been won.

And a spokesman for West Yorkshire Fire Brigade, Senior Divisional Officer Ian Youll (CORR), said the service did not have a similar policy.

The only time someone would be expected to point out a personal relationship would be during an application or promotion procedure to prevent allegations of bias, he said.

A spokesman at Portsmouth, the other university to insist on the code of conduct, said it was a matter of good practice to put relationships on the record regardless of whether it was a matter of a family or a sexual nature to prevent allegations of favouritism during application or promotion procedures.

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