Like other educational institutions, companies and governments worldwide, Queens’ College Cambridge has been reviewing its current and future operations as it grapples with the effect of the on-going Covid-19 pandemic. In order to continue to meet its educational mission, the College has taken a number of measures in the areas of health, education delivery and financial sustainability. As the latter, in particular, has attracted public attention, this note sets out what the College has done and why.
Given Covid’s detrimental impact on revenues, the College moved in a timely way to identify a range of cost saving measures in the short-term that protect our education mission. These include restricting capital expenditure to critical work only, not replacing a number of staff who have chosen to leave over the last six months, a pay freeze for both academic and non-academic staff, and suspending all discretionary expenditure allowances.
What the College has not been able to do, unfortunately, is navigate these exceptionally challenging and uncertain times without addressing the structural changes in the College’s operating environment. With the disappearance for the foreseeable future of all external revenue from conference and banqueting activities, the College, with great regret, commenced a formal consultation process to seek additional savings: the College has striven to achieve the required savings with the minimum impact on staff and our community.
The consultation process concluded on 11th September, 2020 with no compulsory redundancies being required. Sixteen members of staff requested voluntary redundancy with a financial package. Staff in some of the operating departments have agreed to some reduced hours of working and this will be reviewed periodically with the intention of restoring those hours as soon as the level of available work increases and/or the College is in a financial position to do so. For those staff who requested voluntary redundancy and were previously furloughed the College will repay any monies received from Her Majesty’s Government under the Job Retention Scheme.