Yes, it's that time of year again, where the general public get to pick through the details of the University of Salford's Annual Accounts. This year, there have been some important revisions to how the accounts are presented (undoubtedly as a result of the firestorm of negative publicity which followed some of the contents of last year's). We shall go through the highlights in order to avoid this analysis getting too convoluted:
1) There is no mention of Ian Austin's professional endeavours.
2) There is a brief mention of the decision for Mr John Corner to 'stand down' from his position on University Council as a result of his remunerated employment as the University's Director at MediaCityUK. There is, of course, no mention of the fact that his appointment (and possibly his remuneration) was announced before the University's newly amended Charter (permitting remuneration for members of Council) was approved by the Privy Council. There is also no mention that Mr Corner's name as a member of University Council was only removed from the list of members after a certain article appeared in Private Eye back in August.
3) In the Vice-Chancellor's statement, Professor Hall talks in riddles about the implications of the Browne Review, which we do not think he fully understands. We will summarise the implications for him, as he seems not to have managed to grasp them himself - there will be a 100% reduction of teaching grant in the Arts and Humanities. STEM subjects will retain subsidy but only those approved by the Department for BIS as being eligible. It is the intention for tuition fee income to replace HEFCE subsidy for the majority of undergraduate teaching.
4) The ambitious plan of yesteryear to increase student numbers by (at the time) 20% to a total of 24,000 students has been quietly dropped. Some of us, at the time, hinted that this was never going to happen.
5) Student numbers dipped slightly on last year.
6) A £20m loan was drawn in order to part-finance the MediaCityUK development.
7) Borrowing is set to increase by £30m over the next five years, principally to fund capital investments as part of the Estates Master Plan.
8) A profit of £250,000 was made on the sale of the former Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Harloe's, private cottage - called 'Holly Cottage'.
9) Pension liability fell by some £11m - this was largely explained by the decision in the Coalition Government's budget to restore the link between pensions and the Consumer Prices Index rather than the Retail Prices Index (this accounted for some £6.9m of reduction in liability). The remainder of the reduction is put down to the rallying of international stock markets (which, at the time of the last Annual Accounts, were in total disarray). [On a side note, we do not entirely agree with the £6.9m reduction in liability as a result of the government changing the inflationary index to which they will peg pension increases - VAT is due to increase to 20% from Jan 1 2010 and the BoE have not ruled out further quantitative easing. Whilst this reduction in liability was made on actuarial advice, we think the advice might be somewhat optimistic]
10) Whilst HEFCE grants grew by £4m, research grants fell by some £0.8m. Tuition fees from 'Home' students (i.e. those from within the EU studying for a first degree) rose by £6m, whereas tuition fees from students charged overseas rates (i.e. non-EU students and EU students studying for a second degree) fell by some £0.7m. Part time student income rose slightly.
11) Wages/salary costs dipped slightly, but the quantity of staff fell by ~150 and we presume the increased expenditure on Agency/Temp staff might offset the savings here.
12) The Early Retirement/Voluntary Severance scheme (which it was recently resolved to amend) has inflated from a mere £121k last year to a staggering £1.4m this year. With this in mind, it is not altogether surprising the University are seeking to make the schemes more affordable.
13) Professor Martin Hall is earning considerably less than his predecessor - a notional £83,000 less in salary than was Professor Michael Harloe at the point of his departure. However, he is accepting pension contributions, which totalled some £30k for the financial year. Throw in 'benefits in kind' and total emoluments to Professor Hall were some £223,000. This is still £84,000 less than total emoluments awarded to Professor Harloe in the previous year. However, if one reads the Annual Accounts of the University of Cape Town (which, naturally, we have), Professor Hall's acceptance of his position at Salford still resulted in a de facto near-tripling of the salary he was receiving whilst serving as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at UCT (based on current conversion rates), although it must be pointed out that he resigned the role of DVC at UCT many months before his tenure began at Salford.
14) The 14 highest paid members of staff at the University collectively received at least ~£1.7m in remuneration.
15) The accounts note than a senior member of staff left in 09/10 and received an ex-gratia payment of £30,000. We think this might have been Professor Gill Nicholls, but obviously cannot confirm. Note that £30,000 is the maximum ex-gratia payment that can be awarded for loss of office without incurring tax liability.
16) Remarkably, there is some transparency on the costs of Council Retreat - 11 members attended in the previous year, at a cost of some £3,162. It would be interesting to see what this money actually was spent on, but perhaps that his hoping for too much.
17) In a similar vein of transparency, we learn that £7,364 was paid in expenses to 7 Council members in respect of Travel, Hotel and Course Costs. Again we would like to see what this money actually went on.
Expenses
18) There has been substantial revision of the method of presenting the expenses contained under the sub-heading "Other Operating Expenses", which last year generated so much controversy (and continue to do so, for at the time of writing the University is yet publish the data on what the staggering sum of £30m+ was spent on).
19) For this reason, the accounts this year provide a more detailed (but ultimately still rather opaque) reflection of the purposes for which moneys were declared as expenses. This brings the University of Salford's accounts in to line with the majority of UK University Annual Accounts, which have for years been presenting their expenditure in a similar fashion.
20) The sheer quantity of expenses has in no way diminished - in fact it has risen by circa. £3m.
21) £1.2m was spent on catering; £3.6m was spent on Equipment & Furniture (including hire/maintenance); £750,000 was spent on financial charges; £633,000 was spent on consumables (this ordinarily includes chemicals, materials for scientific experiments etc); £543,000 was spent on vehicle and transport costs; £8.5m was spent on 'professional and other fees'; £4.5m was spent on agency staff; £3.698m was spent on 'staff travel and subsistence costs'; £7.7m was spent on 'premises, maintenance and repair'.
22) These are still substantial sums of money. Some items of expenditure also seem to have disappeared from the balance sheet - for instance, last year's accounts included a sub-heading "Household Expenditure" in excess of £200,000. Either this sort of expenditure has been terminated (unlikely) or it has simply been subsumed into other headings.
23) The internal-auditors (KPMG) are described as being remunerated for non-audit work.We assume this relates to their consultancy role at the inception of the current IT replacement project. If so, KPMG were rewarded with a rather handsome £192,000.
A brief ode to Simon Attwell
Simon Attwell has been the University of Salford's Finance Director for several years now. He has displayed immense patience in this role and in dealing with students and, having presented these Annual Accounts for the previous financial year, is due to retire at the end of this month. We wish him well in his retirement, which we are sure he will enjoy to the fullest.
Comment
Whatever way one looks at it, this year's Annual Accounts detail a truly enormous amount of reform and activity taking place at the University of Salford. This, no doubt, is a result of the fresh energies brought to bear on stale problems by Professor Martin Hall, who is an unquestionably talented academic leader. Simply reading through the quantity of changes being enacted is itself staggering.
Yet again, operational expenses have increased. It is difficult for us - and no doubt readers - to place much confidence in the veracity of this expenditure without seeing a detailed breakdown.
The highest paid 14 members of staff are taking home a disproportionately large salary - at least £1.7 million is being split between them. Professor Hall's considerably lesser salary than his predecessor, whilst commendable in some respects, is in others simply a reflection of this being his first year of tenure. The real test of the man will be in seeing whether or not the 14%+ pay rises of his predecessor continue as normal, or whether he is willing to exercise fiscal restraint in his own remuneration. As has been mentioned, his 'mere' £220,000 is still a de facto tripling of the remuneration he is reported as receiving in the UTC Annual Accounts for his post as Deputy Vice-Chancellor with lead responsibility for Transformation Policies (a South African constitutional requirement).
Once the outcome of the current round of FoI requests is dealt with, we will attempt to glean data on the expenses described in this year's annual accounts and assess the veracity of the expenditure for ourselves.
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