10 March 2021 
Amanda Darley, Head of Operations and Engagement
BUFDG
With the BUFDG 2021 Conference just days away, we’re getting really quite excited. By now, all 800+ of our university delegates from 130 HEIs, plus 150 sector supporters and speakers, should have received their link to next week’s conference, and we’re very much looking forward to ‘seeing’ you there. To help delegates understand how it will all work in the Hopin conference platform, we’ve created this video explaining how to use Hopin.
With over 50 possible sessions to attend, you may not get to all those you want to see live, but all the workshops and plenaries are being recorded for you to view another time. If anyone from a delegate HEI needs access to recordings with captions for any sessions then please let Amanda know which sessions you need captioned.
At the start of the month we published the sixth edition of our Quarterly bulletin, for those working in or with the higher education sector. The big news for this edition was/is the Annual Conference, from the 15th-19th March, and the Quarterly is a ‘Conference Special’ - as well as an article introducing the new online event format, we feature three articles from attending supporting organisations.
First, UMAL’s Paul Cusition shares how the insurance landscape has changed over the last 12 months, and how universities should prepare. Then David Vallance from Tilney explains which of your staff are in the ‘sandwich generation’, and why they might need your special consideration (this is also a guest blog on our website). Finally, Duncan Gillespie from Pinsent Masons helps us get to grips with State Aid law post-Brexit.
Click here to read the latest Quarterly, and here to subscribe to the mailing list.
AUDIT SURVEY
This year’s Audit Survey is now open for submissions. For those new to the process, the survey is used to produce a report, shared with all FDs, that helps inform the work of your audit committee - and is also very useful in tendering exercises. This year's survey is a little different in that it contains a few extra qualitative questions on both internal and external audit, in addition to the usual 10 or so quantitative ones.
To supplement your response, we’re also asking institutions to answer one further question about extra internal audit assignments via the discussion boards. The deadline for submissions is Thursday 18 March. If you think you might be responsible for completing this on behalf of your institution, please contact your FD for the access link.
CORONAVIRUS
In the ongoing debate about how to help students financially given all they have had to put up with during the pandemic, Wonkhe has looked at the data on the financial position of student households, and found that it’s either inaccurate (with income from student loans counted as ‘disposable income’) or missing entirely from the data used by HM Treasury to determine the Government’s financial response to Covid. No wonder students are struggling and feeling they haven’t had enough financial support from government (or anyone else) if government doesn’t even know what their actual financial position is.
Where students have felt that their fees or accommodation bills have not purchased what they should have, some complaints have gone to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), and a new batch of OIA decisions was released earlier this month. Wonkhe has analysed the decisions and drawn some useful conclusions. It's notable that the OIA has awarded compensation in successful complaints rather than fee refunds, with the implication that this is a much more useful outcome for the student. It seems that assessing the academic quality is outside of remit of the OIA, and looking at accommodation is tricky, without any guidance on student accommodation from the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA). But missing vital practical aspects of courses could result in successful complaints – the article concludes that any HEI which ‘made grand promises about practice placements, final year shows or significant practical projects ought to be nervous’, as they ‘can’t rely on bodging things so that students meet the learning outcomes without them… Alternatives have to be actually provided, and it has to be actually possible for a student to take advantage of those alternatives.’
In case you haven’t seen it, DfE updated its Covid guidance for English HEIs on 8 March.
BUDGET
You will have seen the main headline for universities from the Budget last week, that fees will be frozen at £9,250, but have you caught up on any tax implications for universities as a result of the Budget? Andrea and Julia revealed all in a TaxHE edition published the day after the Budget, including:
On Budget day, HEPI published a blog by Beth Button of the University Alliance on R&D, the regional role of universities, and the Budget. It illustrates some lesser-known contributions from universities to the pandemic research and manufacturing effort, as well as arguing that many universities are perfectly placed to help progress the Government’s levelling up agenda. The Levelling Up Fund prospectus published later that day does indeed mention that universities (and FE colleges) are relevant stakeholders and partners that bidding authorities should consult with when developing their proposed investments. Hopefully many universities will take a proactive position in considering how they can use their role as anchor institutions in a region to help the levelling up agenda and actively engage with their local bidding authority (unitary authorities, borough councils or county councils).
FUNDING AND CONSULTATIONS
We don’t know much more about the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) since the ARIA bill was published on 2 March, as it covers structure and governance, not how the £800m blue-skies research funding will be invested or who will be eligible to apply. But if you want more detail about what the ARIA bill does cover, Wonkhe has been playing ‘spot the difference’ with the Higher Education Research Act (HERA), so you can see what you think of the similarities and differences.
The Economy Minister has announced a £15m investment in Northern Ireland over three years for ‘skills interventions’, in areas including digital technologies, and employability skills such as leadership and management. It remains to be seen whether universities or university partner institutions will be involved, but the ‘Department for Economy Skills Strategy’ will be published for consultation shortly.
PENSIONS
There has been more commentary on the announcement of eye-watering potential contribution increases from USS over the past week, with Alistair Jarvis of UUK contributing this blog to HEPI regarding the growing challenges facing the scheme, and UCU responding as well, raising very similar points. Unsurprisingly, neither party welcomes the USS proposals, with one overriding concern being that even higher contributions will continue to price even more early career academics (and professionals) out of the scheme.
GENERAL
As well as the guest blog from David Vallance and David A Smith, heads of Tilney’s UK Universities team, talking us through the link between the ‘Sandwich Generation’ and financial wellbeing, as mentioned in the BUFDG section above, we have another new guest blog on our website - ahead of the Friday morning panel debate at the BUFDG 2021 conference, Andrew Connors, National Head of Higher Education & Charities at Lloyds Bank, gives us some thoughts around university finance teams supporting a green recovery.
Nick Hillman at HEPI thinks we all need to be more honest about the nuances in almost every question currently under debate regarding higher education (fees, student numbers, free speech, pensions etc.). Everyone knows most policy making includes trade-offs, so the article questions whether if all interested parties acknowledged the nuances and complexities, could more trade-offs be agreed to allow the sector to solve some of the ongoing issues and move forward?
SUSTAINABILITY AND PROCUREMENT
If you have been alarmed by the amount of packaging entering your home with the explosion in online shopping during the pandemic, think what happens when your translate the 36% increase in online sales during 2020 to deliveries across an entire university campus. There are real sustainability concerns over excessive packaging, non-recycled/recyclable materials and sometimes multiple deliveries for a single order.
As a first step in addressing this across the HE sector, the HEPA Responsible Procurement Group Sustainable Packaging and Deliveries Subgroup has produced a plan to develop resources and activities to support purchasing consortia and university procurement staff in reducing packaging, increasing recycled content, and reducing deliveries which would also help with reducing carbon emissions. Find out more on the HEPA website, including new information on packaging added to the Responsible Procurement Master Commodity Coding Risk Analysis tool, and next steps for the group, such as developing packaging specification guidance for procurement staff and template evaluation criteria, model answers and suggested packaging KPIs. The HEPA article contains much more detail, including considering how responsible use of packaging can be incorporated in the tendering process, the plastic packaging tax from 2022, and WRAP’s UK Plastic Pact.
TAX & PAYROLL/INTERNATIONAL
As well as providing all the invaluable tax information from the Budget (see the Budget section above), we’re delighted to announce the publication this week of BUFDG’s Global Mobility Signposting document, a hugely useful document pulling together links to information on tax, social security, immigration/visas and other useful information for employees to be aware of when working overseas, set out on a country-by-country basis. Many thanks to the relatively new BUFDG International Committee for helping to produce this document (and to any BUFDG members who contribute updates and changes to the document in future… contact Julia if have any information or changes to add).
And talking of member involvement – could you be the new Chair of one of the regional Payroll and Expenses Groups? If that piques your interest, you can find some further information here, and contact Julia to arrange a chat to see if it would suit you.
As usual, there is much more tax and payroll news in the latest edition of TaxHE, published last week.
LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
While some of the BUFDG team have been focused on preparing next week’s conference for the past few weeks/months, that doesn’t mean that March is a quiet month for other BUFDG events! The rest of the BUFDG team have still been preparing a wide range of other events for our members.
Our ‘regional’ Deputy FD meetings are taking place this month so you can find out more and book your place.
Tomorrow (11 March) is a busy day for BUFDG events: at 10am Julia will be presenting a session on Changes to the Off-Payroll Working Rules (IR35) which take effect next month – the session includes a sample Status Determination Statement. At 1:30pm there is the last of this quarter's BUFDG International Forums. And we’ve got the South East Deputy FD meeting at 10am, as well as a Time to Talk session looking at Portfolio Optimisation with KPMG at 2pm.
Andrea will be joined by Liz Maher from Centurion VAT on 23 March for an online Brexit surgery, so book your place and bring your questions! (Please send any issues you wish to raise to Andrea by 16 March). There’s more VAT on 25 March when PwC will take you through Getting ready to go live with MTD, so you’re prepared for your first VAT return starting on/after 1 April. We’ve also got a number of regional tax group meetings throughout March - find details and book your place here.
Our next Time to Talk Credit Control session will be on 25 March.
Our Events Calendar also lists a number of events being run by other organisations which would be of interest to BUFDG members this month, including a KPMG Real Estate Tax webinar, and a Crown Commercial Services session on Delivering Effective Category Strategies, so do take a look.
JOB OF THE FORTNIGHT
The job of the fortnight for this issue is a Strategic Finance Business Partner at Swansea University for the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The faculty has income and expenditure exceeding £45 million and the post holder will lead the Finance function for the faculty and help develop and deliver the business plan for the faculty as part of its Executive Management Team.
