BUFDG Digest - 15 January 2024

BUFDG

Registration is open for the 2025 BUFDG Finance Festival – our 3-day online event covering all things H E finance and procurement. The 2025 event takes place from Monday 10 to Wednesday 12 March, and features a fantastic line-up of 28 challenging, informative, and entertaining sessions covering everything from cash to commercialisation, from finance tech to funding, and strategy to sustainability.

The festival is completely free to all those who work in a UK university. We don’t expect anyone to be there for every session or to pick your sessions in advance – your single booking will let you ‘build-your-own’ conference where you can take part in the sessions of most value to you. We’re confident that every finance person at every institution will be able to find something of benefit. And the ‘Programme’ page on the festival website includes a handy ‘what should I watch?’ guide to help you make your decisions. You can book your place here, and if you have any questions or comments about the event please do get in touch with Matt. We look forward to seeing you there!

SECTOR

Universities UK has appointed Sir Nigel Carrington, former international lawyer, business leader and Vice Chancellor, to lead its Taskforce on Efficiency and Transformation in Higher Education. The taskforce will examine “how - after years of working to reduce costs individually – universities can partner, collaborate and deliver transformation and cost savings through new models and ways of working.” The taskforce aims to publish recommendations before the end of 2025. Here’s a list of who else is on the taskforce, and here’s coverage of the launch from the Times (£).

Earlier this week the Prime Minister launched the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan. The plan includes, among other things, the development of sustainable AI infrastructure (including an expansion of the University of Edinburgh’s super-computer, Archer2), the creation of AI growth zones, and regulatory revision. There’s a published response from Universities Scotland.

The ONS has announced a change in emphasis in their review of the classification of universities – it will now start with a review of universities’ transactions in 2025, rather than an overall review of universities: “The universities review will therefore now commence in early 2025 and will concentrate on the statistical classification of the transactions in which UK universities engage”.

UUK and Advance HE are launching a new series of the Future of Higher Education podcast today (15 January). The four-part series will focus on governing and leading transformation and change in the higher education sector.

The IFS has published its annual report on education spending in England. The executive summary is helpfully broken down by tier, with Higher Education towards the bottom – where the main headline is their projection of a £1.6bn sector deficit by 2025/26.

The end of 2024 saw the publication of the annual Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) report, helpfully summarised by Michael Salmon at Wonkhe, highlighting the various organisations now involved in influencing and drawing up policy for government on related issues, including the Industrial Strategy Council, the Department for Work and Pensions, and Skills England. In a separate article, Michael notes the latest Home Office figures showing a 15% increase in December’s year-on-year student visa applications.

The government has published its white paper on devolution, outlining plans to streamline local government and ensure the whole country is covered by ‘Strategic Authorities’ each with elected mayors. In this government’s answer to ‘levelling-up’, the authorities (including those that currently exist) will have a closer relationship with UKRI and associated innovation funding. The team at Wonkhe have had a first stab at what it might mean for HE, and there are a number of devolution think-pieces on HEPI.

Finally, much of this news features in the 2025 Wonkhe ‘almanac’. A highly-recommended read!

TAXES

The 2025 Tax Conference takes place on 11-12 June at Edgbaston Conference Centre at the University of Birmingham. We’re in the early planning stage and looking for suggestions for sessions, so if you have any ideas please add them to this discussion thread.

The Charity Tax Group has raised an issue experienced by some universities who hold investments through a fund manager, and where income received could be suffering from overseas withholding taxes (WHT). WHT is a deduction at source from income paid out by banks or funds and in universities the amounts at stake can be significant. By way of example one charity had investments of c£70m and they were losing WHT of over £100k. CTG are calling for affected organisations interested in collaborating in a working group to minimise WHT on investments. If this is you, you can get touch with the CTG here.

Julia is working on a termination payment guidance document for members. If you have any scenarios/examples that you think might be useful to other members if included, please post them here or email Julia.

As part of the NWUPC's updated procurement of global mobility services (due this year), they are looking at whether providers can offer Employer of Record services. They are therefore looking for universities to provide them with their specific requirements when looking at an employer of record on immigration, taxation, accountancy and payroll. If you can help, please provide details here.

Before Christmas, HMRC sent a number of questions to BUFDG to seek feedback from members on e-invoicing issues.  Please read this discussion thread for more information. The key concern is that the issue of invoices via PDF will not qualify as “e-invoicing” as HMRC consider e-invoicing to be the digital exchange of invoice information directly between buyers' and suppliers' financial systems without any manual processing. Although Andrea has already responded to HMRC, further feedback from members is welcome, as BUFDG will respond to the Consultation. This issue will be added to the agenda for the National Tax Group and HMRC meetings later this month.

Finally, as members are aware, VAT is often a "blocker" to sharing costs within the H E sector. UUK (with input by BUFDG) has had this raised in Parliament. You can find out more here.

As usual, members can stay up to date with all the latest H E tax issues and information via the TaxHE newsletter.

PENSIONS

TPS has been in the news this week. Two senior managers at Northumbria University have written a blog on HEPI outlining the unfairness of the current arrangements for post-92 institutions who are legally obliged to offer the Teacher’s Pension Scheme. In their words, “for every 1000 staff earning this [a typical academic] salary in TPS, the annual cost is £8.2 million greater than if those same employees were members of USS”. The blog was also reported in a piece in the Times Higher, while UCEA have written a direct letter to Darren Jones MP, the Chief Secretary to the Secretary, calling for post-92 universities to be allowed to offer an alternative pension scheme.

On a more practical note, TPS have created a new online guide for members to help them understand their pension, issued an apology for delayed CETV applications, and suggested a naming convention for employers who have issues attaching documents.

In other pensions news, there’s a new Chair of the JNC - Lawrence Churchill CBE (current Chair of Clara Pensions and former Chair of NEST, Pension Policy Institute and Pension Protection Fund), while LGPS published a monthly bulletin for December 2024 including LGPS Scotland regs, Club transfers re: McCloud remedy, Dashboards connection guide, 2025 training programme and a reminder to submit your fund annual report for 2023/24 (England & Wales).

SCOTLAND

48 organisations have backed a letter to the UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves calling for funding to cover the additional NIC costs. Furthermore, Universities Scotland has prepared (Annex B) a briefing calling on the Scottish government to support institutions, given the publicly funded model.  

SFC has recently publicised information on fee anomaly claims. Universities should make claims as normal, by 18 April, and the SFC states “ we will endeavour to meet all claims, subject to availability of funding. However, due to budget challenges, we may not be able to meet all claims in full.”

The Scotsman reports that Universities Scotland has written to MSPs to warn of the danger of under-recruitment claw-backs by the Scottish Funding Council at a number of HEPs, and Michael Salmon of Wonkhe tracks the progress of a possible regulatory and funding expansion at the SFC.

WALES

Medr has published the Welsh regulator’s guidance for internal auditors for the audit of H E data systems and processes. In the continuing absence of nationally-contracted external auditors, the regulator relies on the assurance provided to HEPs and their Audit Committees by their internal auditors about the systems and processes used to produce data returns to HESA, Medr, and Welsh Government.

PROCUREMENT

HEPA is pleased to share a template slide deck that members can utilise with stakeholders to communicate key messages relating to the upcoming Procurement Act, including: the aims of the Act, timeline, key features, impact throughout the procurement lifecycle, implementation, risks and implications.

The Procurement Specific Questionnaire (PSQ) has been published on the Procurement Pathway tool. The relevant PPN is awaiting ministerial sign-off; HEPA will update all as soon as the PPN has been formally published. 

There are two Communities of Practice sessions covering the PSQ this week, led by the Cabinet Office’s Sam Russell. The first takes place on Wednesday 15 January, 10:00 - 11:30, and the second on Thursday 16 January, 10:00 - 11:30.

There are also two sessions, led by Ian Sears OBE covering the Competitive Flexible Procedure, on Tuesday 21 January, 10:30 - 12:00, and Wednesday 22 January, 10:30 - 12:00. In addition to these sessions, and to support you in your preparation for the implementation of the Act, the Cabinet Office are continuing to add to their suite of guidance documents and templates. The Competitive Flexible Procedure Guidance & Templates are now available to download from the Procurement Pathway tool.

HEPA recently shared a letter from Adam Hill, Digital lead, Government Commercial Function which contains important information about getting ready for the Central Digital Platform (CDP) in advance of go-live for the Procurement Act 2023 on 24 February 2025. Please do take the time to read the letter - it contains useful information to help you and your team prepare for the new regime. Please share the communication across your institution as necessary, and begin to think about who will be best placed to fulfil the administrator role and the information you will need in order to register on the CDP.  HEPA will confirm the onboarding window for our H E sector later this month.

Colleagues at UKUPC have kindly shared a very useful update regarding UK-wide interoperability and the upcoming Procurement Act which you can read on the discussion boards.

Finally, a reminder that the Scope 3 HESCET tool was updated in November and released on the HEPA website for download last year.

MISCELLANEOUS

You can find an update on BUFDG’s work on the Economic Crime Levy here.  Please bring this to the attention of your Treasury teams.

HW Fisher are hosting a programme of online events for Chairs of Audit. The next is on 30 January, featuring speakers from the Office for Students, and may be of interest to your relevant colleagues. The full details are available on the HW Fisher website.

Sarasin & Partners are running their annual Spring Investment Seminars on 12 or 18 March. These are for charity trustees and those working with charities to gain insights from experts in charity investment and asset management. They will discuss key investment themes and opportunities, stewardship, and provide an outlook for 2025.

As mentioned in the last Digest, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DesNez) has published its plan for decarbonising the UK energy supply by 2030. The plan will “will unleash £40 billion a year of mainly private investment in homegrown clean power projects and infrastructure across the country”, with the additional aim of stabilising and ultimately reducing home energy prices.

Our Job of the Fortnight is for a Tax Manager (VAT Specialist) at the University of Sheffield. The role reports to the university’s Head of Tax, and involves “reviewing commercial, non-business and exempt activities to ensure compliance with tax legislation”, as well as providing “specialist guidance and support on all aspects of business taxation including clear and helpful advice and training to non-tax staff”, among other responsibilities. The deadline for applications is 28 January.

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