All entries for Friday 14 July 2017

Provost's Update No. 5 (July 2017)

Admissions forecast

The undergraduate position is looking positive, but the continuing trend for Home postgraduate taught is below target. Forecasts are being shared on a regular basis with Accommodation and Timetabling, via the Student Intake Working Group, and with Heads of Department.

UCAS reported has reported that the total number of applicants for 2017 entry to UK HE institutions were down 4 per cent and applicants from the European Union down 5 per cent. Some 649,700 people applied by the June deadline, around 25,000 fewer than last year. The numbers are at their lowest since 2013.

ARC Planning 2017-18

The ARC plan has now received final approval as part of the Senate and Council sign-off of the University Plan. ARC approved some £2m worth of bids in-year and has been able to approve a further £2m of planning round bids. These approvals have been granted despite the fact that ARC is significantly behind its surplus target (by around £8m). In part, this reflects a wish to continue to provide support for certain key strategic initiatives. In part, it’s also the case that the additional surplus being generated within academic departments during the current financial year has helpfully given us the ability to approve more bids during the planning round than might otherwise have been the case.

Over the summer, I think it would be helpful to look again at the operation of the planning round and we will be looking for views from HoDs. Areas of particular interest include:

• Do we need separate meeting structures for different types of departments or do we end up duplicating a lot of discussion for those departments with separate finance and strategy meetings?
• Do we have the right sort of information to make decisions?
• Can we find a way of simplifying approval mechanisms for bids – and providing better information about the scale of bids that are likely to be approved (so that there isn’t a lot of time devoted to bids that re unlikely to succeed?)
• Are we strategic enough during the planning round – is the balance between planning round approvals and in year bids right?

Capital Plan

The University’s capital plan has now been signed off through Senate and Council. This has a commitment to an average spend of £108m per year over the next 4 years. We will receive some external grant funding to support capital spend, but we will still need to find around £360m over the period to fund buildings, refurbishments and equipment. To do this we rely on the cash that is generate from both surplus and from the depreciation charge. So in preparing the financial plans we have been focused on ensuring that we are able generate sufficient surplus to fund the planned capital expenditure. Major projects in progress include:

• Sherbourne residences – due to be finished early August – handed over to us and ready for occupancy, 267 additional bed spaces
• Sports Centre due to start
• Maths started
• Engineering labs – a major refurbishment project will take place over the summer
• Arts Centre – temporary theatre will go ready for use in September.
• WMG’s MEC building

Meanwhile, plans for the new Humanities Building and the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building on Gibbet Hill continue to progress.

STP

The Sessional Teaching Payroll project (STP) has received formal sign-off from ARC. Final handbooks and payment frameworks have been agreed, roles have been graded and there is now a process to ensure that essential information for all sessional teaching staff is input into the payroll system. This will continue throughout the summer. We will continue to look at arrangements for the engagement of sessional teachers including consideration of alternative models, but for now the priority will be to ensure that STP becomes operational and that the system works smoothly.

Advisory Group on the Appointment of Heads of Department

The Advisory Group on the appointment of HoDs recently proposed to Senate some new arrangements for the appointment and terms and conditions for academic HoDs. In brief, the size classification of Departments has been reviewed, with a number of departments being move to a larger category. In addition, the size of the honorarium being paid is being adjusted for inflation and you will be receiving a letter advising you of the changes that directly affect you. We have also sought to clarify the support that would normally be made available to HoDs during their term of office and the study leave entitlement on completion.

Sir George Cox

The current Chair of Council, Sir George Cox is completing his term of office and has chaired his last Council meeting. He will be succeed by Sir David Normington from the start of the next academic year. George’s extensive contribution to the University will be recognised with the award of the Chancellor’s medal during next week’s degree ceremonies.

Commercial Group

Steering Committee was recently provided with a review of activity within the Commercial Group. This highlighted a good year for the group – with particular highlights including the success of The Slate (user feedback at 100% positive) and usage continuing to rise; popularity and impact of cashless self-service tills at RGS; a good year for the UK Unitemps franchise (2 new sign ups and more hoped for) and a strong performance from Jobs.ac.uk. Overall, forecasts for this year suggest that the work of CCSG will contribute around £20m to the University’s gross surplus.

Adam Waddingham : 14 Jul 2017 11:38 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem