The University’s 2011⁄12 HEFCE grant for teaching and research has been announced as £95.8 million. This is in line with expectations and early indications from HEFCE in January. It reflects a 6.3 per cent reduction on the original HEFCE grant for 2010⁄11, although the University was subject to further government cuts during the course of the year which brought down this original figure (see details below).
The University has been consistent and conscientious in its preparation for increasingly significant cuts to our government funding. However‚ this remains a huge reduction in funding for the University and signals that we will need to continue efforts to reduce our reliance on HEFCE funding over the next year.
We will now proceed to build these numbers into the University budget projections for 2011/12 which will form part of the strategic planning round. The University budget based on these numbers will be presented to Council in June 2011.
Many colleagues will be interested in patterns across the sector and the Russell Group. There are many ways to look at this data, but some initial observations would include:
• There is little variation amongst our peer group of English Russell Group universities.
• Universities who appear particularly vulnerable are those with a higher concentration of teaching income and a higher concentration of research rated 2* (internationally recognised), both of which have been more severely cut in this year’s allocation.
• The institutions with the highest concentration of 4* research (world leading) show the lowest reductions in grant (such as Cambridge and UCL), or even increases (Oxford and Imperial).
For further details on the grant announcement, please contact Malcolm Ace ([email protected]), Chief Financial Officer.
Important numbers
Teaching and Research (2010/11)
£102.3 million teaching and research grant (original)
£99.6 million teaching and research grant (after reductions during the course of the year)
Teaching and Research (2011/12)
£95.8 million teaching and research grant (a 6.3 per cent cut on the original total grant, before other reductions were made in the course of the year or a 3.8 per cent cut, after the reductions)
£52.1 million teaching grant (8.3 per cent reduction on the original teaching grant)
£43.7 million research grant (3.8 per cent reduction on the original research grant)
Capital funding (for teaching and research)
£4.85 million capital funding grant for 2011/12
£19 million is the three year annual average for the capital grant, highlighting the extent of the reduction in the latest allocation.