BUFDG Digest - 9 October 2024

BUFDG

As we mentioned in the last Digest, the 2025 Finance Festival, our 3-day extravaganza of all things HE Finance, takes place online from the 10th-12th March. The festival only works with the support and involvement of BUFDG members, and so we'd love for colleagues in the sector to submit an idea for a session (each session can be up to 1 hour long). The sessions that feature university colleagues always have great feedback, and are always relevant and highly valued. The deadline for members for submitting an idea is Friday 18 October. Please feel free to drop Matt an email if you have any concerns, or just want a bit more info or some moral support!

We’re running an event with our PHES colleagues for all senior leaders within HE (Heads, Deputies, or Directors), across all functions, on understanding and navigating the current financial pressures in the sector. The event will also hear from a panel of leaders across a range of functions:- Finance, Estates, HR, IT, Facilities and Strategic Planning, about how these challenges are manifesting in their function, how they are working together to meet the challenge, and what tops tips they would give to working with other senior leaders in these difficult times.  

The Payroll & Employment tax Group are seeking co-chairs for the Northern, Midlands and Welsh regional groups. You don’t need to be an expert in all things employment taxes or payroll - just a healthy interest and/or some practical knowledge. Most important is your desire to create a welcoming network in your region. The time commitment is approximately 12 hours per year (apportioned between co-chairs). To find out more, email Julia.

SECTOR / FUNDING

Following the steady drip of news through September, the Universities UK ‘blueprint for change’ was finally published last week, and has received considerable media attention. It features eight chapters, each covering a different area of university activity and led by a sector expert, including research (Chapter 4), sustainable funding (Chapter 6), and better regulation and governance (Chapter 7). While Chapter 6 is perhaps the priority for Digest readers, Wonkhe editor Debbie McVitty has an excellent summary of the whole document.

The release was pre-empted by a HEPI debate paper from the LSE’s Professor Tim Leunig, revisiting undergraduate fees, and laying out a range of possible changes. Wonkhe’s Jim Dickinson lays out a detailed rebuttal, and champions the NUS’ earlier alternative.

The Labour Party Conference was perhaps the place to divine what the government response to the blueprint might be. As the final day clashed with our last Digest, here’s a good round-up from HEPI policy director Rose Stephenson on where government priorities for the sector might lie.

In other, but related news, there’s an editorial in Nature, calling for universities in the UK to receive more public funding, while the Independent argues that putting up fees isn’t the answer to the university funding conundrum. If you’re interested in what might happen if a university became insolvent, then this PwC/Kings College London Policy Institute event could be for you.  Meanwhile, UKRI has published Research England grant allocations.

There’s an interesting article in Sky News covering a call for more coordinated and ‘credible’  investments in university spinouts. At an event in London on Thursday Lord O’Neill, former Goldman Sachs chief economist, and currently Chair of Northern Gritstone, will push for the government to ‘develop a stronger ecosystem’ for corporate ventures created by academics. The article also name-checks Midlands Mindforge, QantX, and the Spark Fund.

Finally, the five universities in the North-East of England (Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland, and Teeside) are launching a partnership later this year, called ‘Universities for North East England’ (UNEE), to strengthen their collaboration and ‘achieve even greater social and economic impact. The press release is here.

SCOTLAND

The Herald has published a whole series of insight and opinion articles discussing fees and the funding of Scottish Higher Education. These include articles on the cost of education, and the importance of funding from international students, as well as Scottish Universties’ global role, and what the future might hold.  

Written evidence provided to the Education, Children, and Young People committee by HE Minister Graeme Day at the end of September covers government activity on a range of areas, including VAT/Shared Services, the cost of Scottish TPS, Widening Participation, and student mental health funding.  

FINANCIAL REPORTING / AUDIT

The  USS disclosure requirements letter and disclosure note have now been published. The letter provides information on the funding position of the scheme as a whole, and has been presented in a manner that is intended to comply with the disclosure requirements of FRS 102 Section 28. It is provided to support the production of your HEP's financial statements, and is accompanied by the 'Annex A' Sep 24 disclosure note.

A reminder that we recently published an updated version of our guide on Accounting for Pensions in Higher Education. This BUFDG guide is written for university governors, non-accounting staff, students, staff representatives and student representatives as well as for Finance Directors and colleagues in finance teams tasked with producing financial statements and accompanying notes. This, along with our other major guides, can be found on the Understanding Finance pages of the BUFDG website.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has published its key audit Facts and Trends report for 2024. There are some interesting findings, including ongoing audit market consolidation, and “a decrease in the overall number of registered audit firms”. However, the report notes that “despite this, there was an increase in the number of FTSE 350 audits undertaken by firms outside of the Big Four, with 41 now undertaken by non-Big Four firms, up from 35 in 2022.” Read the full report, containing detailed statistics and trend analysis, on the FRC website.

The team at Pinsent Masons have a blog on their website about what many institutions will have experienced – an increase in auditor scrutiny of internal investigations as part of year-end procedures. Partners David Lister and Hinesh Shah suggest that “organisations should proactively plan to address and manage potential issues that could have a material financial impact”.

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING / TRAC

We’re pleased to be running our online MA Week again this year, from 19-22 November. The schedule will include a broad mix of topics from tech and tools, to general H E updates, and the personal skills you need to succeed, including: the H E landscape under the new government; practical applications of AI; how to use dashboards effectively; Power BI; handling difficult conversations; the macroeconomic climate post-Budget; prioritising in tough times; and much more! You can find out more and book your place here.

Our excellent TRAC conference took place 24-25 September. For this year it was also CPD certified (6 hours). If you couldn’t attend, but would like to access the recordings, you can still ‘book a ticket’. Contact Gill if you have any questions about how this works.

In related news, a reminder that there is a basic Introduction to TRAC e-learning course available to BUFDG Pro subscribing institutions, while our next in-depth training event starts on 4 November.

TAXES

From time to time, BUFDG write guidance documents, create response papers on the HE implications of certain (proposed) legislative changes, or commission advice from third parties, etc.  Whilst Andrea and Julia review these carefully, we want to ensure that they are a) technically accurate from tax perspective and b) representative of the HE sector. With this in mind, we’re putting together a ‘technical committee’ to be involved in reviewing these documents and ensuring they are fit for purpose. If you have decent technical knowledge of, and/or practical experience of dealing with employer duties then please do get in touch with Julia.

We are gearing up for the Autumn Budget on Wednesday, 30 October (following our  throw the kitchen sink at it spending review response) which has been primed by the Government as a potentially ‘painful’ budget. Most (guesses” concentrate on wealthier individuals (CGT, IHT, restriction of pension relief), but the Government also hasn’t ruled out an increase in employer NIC (currently 13.8%). If there are significant changes, we’ll be running a Budget Special on Tuesday, 5 November.

It may therefore be fortuitous timing that we will be joined by the  HE Sector team at HMRC for a Time to Talk session on Wednesday 13 November. The new sector lead, Deborah Johnson, who plans to talk through the new Customer Compliance Manager model as well as share their compliance focus for the 2024/25 tax year.

Julia’s continuing obsession with the LITRG’s various tax explainers continues.  Some of the highlights this month may be useful to share with non-tax colleagues, or links on your intranet?

KPMG has prepared  this table for BUFDG members that provides high level guidance on whether foreign universities can access the education exemption, in readiness for the January 2025 place of supply changes.

Visitors from Europe and the US will require an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) for travel to the UK from next year. There is a tranche based system, with the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand (amongst others) starting on 8 January and Europe from 2 April.  Read this Pinsent Masons article for more details.

There are dozens of tax events coming up. We can’t list them all and it would be unfair to just pick a few, so please do take a look at the list here, to see if any are of interest.

PROCUREMENT

We’re running a special free event on 31 October to introduce Procurement for non-procurement specialists. If you (or a colleague you know of) wants to know more about procurement, what it does and how it works within institutions, what resources are available, and how to work more effectively with procurement colleagues, then this event will knock your socks off.

Following the announcement that the Procurement Act 2023 will now commence on 24 February 2025 to allow time for a new National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) to be produced, the Cabinet Office are inviting contributions to the development of the NPPS through a dedicated survey.  The survey opened on Monday and you can access it here; it is open for four weeks, and will close at midday on Monday 4 November 2024.

The Procurement Pathway tool has officially been launched and you can also find an update on the Procurement Act 2023 templates here.

SUSTAINABILITY

Following the recent webinar showcasing recent updates to the Cost of Net Zero calculator, the revised tool, and updated worked examples for F E and H E are now available to download from our website, along with a recording of the session and slides. These include details on what has changed and where this lives in the calculator, to ensure it is straightforward for existing users to carry across to the new template. The updates have been made following the release of new Future Energy Scenarios in July 2024, along with some enhancements in response to user feedback, and ensure the tool remains relevant for another year.

AdvanceHE have published two volumes of case studies, covering the progress made by 15 institutions towards meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Volume 1 contains examples on Education for Sustainable Development and Building Future Leaders, while the second contains those case studies submitted under the theme of Supporting Reduced Inequality and Sustainable Inclusion.

If you’re involved in the production of your university’s Annual Report, you might be interested in a KPMG webinar on 8 November looking at how local councils are preparing for sustainability reporting, and what kinds of data capture and reporting central government might require in future. Here’s the sign-up link.

A reminder that Phase 4 of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (Salix funding) has been announced, with the portal for applications set to open in mid-October and close on 25 November 2024.

OTHER

The  T H E Campus Live event takes place on 27-28 November in Birmingham, and  BUFDG members can get a 30% discount on tickets! The event will ‘bring together higher education leaders, policymakers, and industry voices from across the region to discuss and plan how to improve institutional strategy and strategic planning across five major themes’ (financial sustainability; international strategy; university market insights; teaching, learning and student experience; strategy, governance, and operations). Early bird tickets are available for £249 until 18 October (and don’t forget  to contact us for an extra BUFDG discount!).

Our Job of the Fortnight is for a Financial Operations Team Leader at the University of Exeter. In post, the successful applicant will support “work-load management and day to day line management of the Accounts Receivable Team, responding to escalated queries, Delivery of the University’s debt management procedures, including debtor contact and recommendation of proposed sanctions, payment plans, external debt collection agency referrals and legal action”. The deadline for applications is 22 October.

There are lots of other vacancies listed on the BUFDG jobs page.