BUFDG Digest 17 June

BUFDG

There are just two days left to register for the FREE English HE Finance Conference - bookings close on Friday 19 June, so please make sure you and your teams don’t miss out. Taking place on 1 July in Birmingham, it’s open to all staff, at all levels and across all functions, and offers a great opportunity to hear what’s happening across the sector - as you’ll see from the programme.

We’ve extended the deadline for the fantastic (and unique) job opportunity working in the BUFDG team in the new role of Accounting Specialist until next Monday (22 June). All details can be found here, and if you have any questions, please get in touch with Amanda (today) or Joni (Thursday/Friday).

We’re pleased to let you know that version 2 of our Ahead in the Cloud  guide to implementing Financial (and other) Systems in Higher Education, in partnership with KPMG is now available for download. The new version is a refresh of the guidance with particular updates in the sections on Procurement, Tax, and post-implementation. The guide draws upon the experience, thoughts, and advice of many senior Finance, IT, HR, and transformation leads in a sample of universities around the country, to help institutions run successful implementations (and hopefully avoid the most common, damaging, and expensive pitfalls!). It's an essential read for anyone implementing new systems (finance or otherwise) in H E, or even just starting to think about it. We hope that this proves a useful resource for transformation in the sector. If you have any questions, please contact Matt.

Introduction to HE for Professional Services Staff - taking place on 3 July, this FREE online morning session is for staff who are new to HE (within the last six months or so). It offers a whistle‑stop introduction to working in the sector, including a panel discussion on how to navigate HE effectively, with practical insights and top tips.

The next free Time to Talk session on Income Collection takes place at 10am on 23 June on Teams. This is a members-only discussion led meeting to share ideas, best practice and to network with your peers. It’s not too late to sign up. Please contact Rachel for any discussion item requests in advance., and it’s not too late to sign up.

This edition’s Shared/Sector-owned Services Spotlight is on the payroll bureau TU Pay. TU Pay is a BACS-approved Payroll and Pension service specifically tailored for the education sector, with the backing of Teesside University. The recording from the Shared Services showcase, where the bureau is introduced by Rob Coulson, is available to view here. In it, Rob explains all aspects of the TU Pay service, some more obvious than others. As well as obviously making sure your staff are paid on time, Rob stresses the ‘advisory-led’ nature of the service, where they’re proactive in providing pay and pension advice and supporting compliant decision-making. So every university in the service will contribute to and gain benefit from the shared in-house team.

SECTOR

The CUC has launched the final version of the new Code of Higher Education Governance, with a launch webinar this morning. The Code was “developed in response to growing pressures around funding, regulation and public trust” and will “support governing bodies to lead effectively in an increasingly complex environment”. It applies to England, NI, and Wales. Chair of the Code steering committee, Iain Cornish, has an accompanying article on Wonkhe.

There are a few ‘alternative ideas’ from the HE sector that have emerged over the last couple of weeks, that could be interesting stories to follow to see if they might work for others. First, the BBC has the story of a partnership signed between University of Northampton and Northampton College, to create clearer pathways between college qualifications and corresponding university degrees, in an attempt to ‘keep students local’, widen participation and reduce the cost of H E. The University of Buckingham has announced a significant tuition fee discount on a number of its programmes which, combined with the two-year degree structure allows them to advertise some attractive comparative figures to potential students on their website. Finally, the North East’s five universities have grouped together to create a collective £22.5m fund to support university spin outs in the area. All universities are active decision-makers in the fund, which is also set up to attract and enable additional third-party investment.

HESA has published its graduate outcomes dataset covering 23-24. As usual, DK at Wonkhe has crunched the numbers for the sector’s benefit. In a related story, there is apparently positive news from the latest Student Academic Experience Survey from AdvanceHE and HEPI, which shows perceptions of good value for money jumping significantly to 45% of students. However, Jim Dickinson urges caution in interpreting the results.

SCOTLAND

The seven-strong membership of the Scottish Parliament Education and Gaelic Committee has been published on the Parliament website.

In other news, the statistics from the Follow-up Leaver Destinations survey for 24-25 are positive, with 93.5% of young people in training, education or employment, up from 93.1% in the prior year’s survey.

ENGLAND

The OfS has announced the outcomes of the consultation on the revision of the Teaching Excellent Framework (TEF), and will “publish ratings on ‘student experience’ and ‘student outcomes’ for each university and college, where sufficient data allows”. It also proposes to “introduce a strengthened set of incentives linked to these ratings”. Exactly how all this works in practice will emerge following a further consultation in the Autumn. Wonkhe editor Debbie McVitty adds her thoughts and analysis in this article.

The government has published news of who has benefited from allocations from the defence-related skills funding competition, with £80m (of which £30m capital funding) split between 24 providers.

TAX AND PAYROLL

Thank you to all those who attended and contributed to last week’s fantastic Tax Conference. If you or your team missed it, don’t worry - tickets are still available to access all session recordings. Contact Rachel if you have any questions.

Looking forward, we have our quarterly Employment Taxes update on the morning of 30 June. The agenda is built with input from advisers, HMRC and, most importantly, our members. If there are any topics you would like covered, please, please email Julia. This event will be recorded, and the recording will be uploaded to our website after the event (usually within a week). Please check the Webinars page to find the recording. If you have a query regarding your booking, please contact Julia. 

Immediately following the update, from 11.30 onwards on 30 June is the Employment Tax Surgery, where we will be hosting this Employment Tax Surgery for members only (no advisers/third parties) present. This is to discuss any aspects raised at the quarterly update in more detail. This event will be not be recorded.

FINANCIAL REPORTING

The notes from the most recent SORP implementation forum are available to view on the website, as well as the recording and slides of the most recent Financial Statements (Technical Review) webinar.

With audit planning sessions happening over the next couple of weeks, the team from HW Fisher have put together some questions to explore around the HE SORP and managing the covenant impact. In addition, they also have more HE SORP webinars coming over the next few months, with a deep dive into lease accounting on 8 July, Revenue recognition on 21 July, and Fair Value (and other changes impacting the SORP on 16 September.

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

UKRI has published a timeline for research and innovation funding opportunities coming in the next six months, as part of ongoing efforts to give more notice and better visibility of UKRI’s plans. Meanwhile, UUK has announced an ‘ambition’, with the Chancellor on board, to “help double the level of external investment flowing into UK university innovation by 2035”, which is a nice round “£100bn of external investment flowing into university spinouts, startups and social enterprises over a decade”.

The government has published the report of the 2025 UK innovation survey, which has found, among other things, that just 34% of UK businesses were ‘innovation active’, which is a slight decrease compared to 36% from 2020-2022. There’s also positive news from the UK’s involvement in Horizon Europe (including a significant increase in the UK’s share of funding), with all the statistics available on the government website.  

PENSIONS

Some welcome TPS news this week, as the government (via a TPS discussion in the Lords) has confirmed that by its own calculations, the forthcoming changes to the SCAPE discount rate would mean a £12bn reduction in contributions to the TPS across all employers. What exactly this means for the HE sector more specifically is still uncertain, but it seems that at least some relief from April ’27 is on the cards.

In related news, Rebecca Dodd at Mercer has added a blog post to the Mercer website explaining the process for how employers might offer USS as an option instead.

MISCELLANEOUS

The UK Government’s recently published 2026 greenhouse gas conversion factors significantly reduce the emissions factor for grid electricity, meaning universities may report lower Scope 2 emissions even if usage hasn’t changed. This explainer from JRP Solutions unpicks why this is the case, and why “they should not be viewed as a reason to ease off energy reduction efforts or Net Zero ambitions.”

KPMG’s higher education technical updates return this summer, starting on 30 June and 7 July, online. These sessions are designed to give higher education finance teams a clear, practical update on what’s changed – and what’s coming next – across tax, audit and policy, alongside a sector focused perspective on the challenges currently facing the sector. Each session will also include interactive discussion and Q&A, with time to explore the issues most relevant to the sector.

Our Job of the Fortnight is for a Senior Research Finance Manager at LSE. The successful applicant will “be responsible for leading a team to provide a comprehensive and high-quality finance and post award service”, and supporting LSE’s “world-renowned Research Centres to deliver cutting edge research and innovation projects”. The deadline for applications is 28 June.

As usual, there are lots of other vacancies listed on the BUFDG jobs page.