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• Chair's Introduction
• Strategic Report
• Public Benefit Statement
• Corporate Governance Statement
• Independent Auditor's Report to the Council of the University of Essex
• Accounting Policies
• Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income and Expenditure
• Consolidated and University Statement of Changes in Reserves
• Balance Sheets as at 31 July 2023
• Consolidated Cash Flow Statement
• Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31 July 2023

Chair’s Introduction

We have much to celebrate in the last academic year, as the University has bounced back strongly from the impact of the pandemic, and we look forward to celebrating our 60th anniversary in the coming year. We take the sustainability of the University in all its forms very seriously and I am delighted that we have been able to meet out cash surplus target (measured as the surplus for the year plus non-cash transactions (depreciation and movements in investment property valuations, fixed asset investments and provisions) less capital grants and loan principal repayments) two years earlier than anticipated in our post-pandemic recovery plan. Growth in tuition fees, an increase in research income and a recovery in campus trading activities have been key components of our performance recovery. Generating a cash surplus is vital in creating headroom for us to reinvest in the academic mission of the University, including in academic and professional services staff, and updating our research and teaching infrastructure, especially specialist facilities that allow us to respond to student demand for courses.

Anticipating a slow recovery for undergraduate student recruitment, in part as a result of the pandemic, a 65% reduction in undergraduate student registrations from the EU as a result of Brexit, and the freezing of the UK undergraduate fee, the University is benefiting from a student recruitment diversification strategy launched in 2016 and which has evolved into our Essex 2025 project. This project is fully supported by the University Council and ably led by the University executive. I am delighted our student numbers have almost recovered to the total student population that we had in 2020-21 with 19,090 students this year.

We have increased students registered on our postgraduate and research degree programmes, Students on our Postgraduate Taught (PGT) programmes have increased to 5,620 students, more than double the 2,240 in AY 2019-20. The profile of our student population is now 5% Postgraduate Research (PGR), 30% PGT and 65% Undergraduate (UG). In 2021 we successfully launched a January entry point for 10 Postgraduate Taught courses across five departments. In January 2023, 939 students registered on courses and from AY 2023-24 10 departments will offer 17 Postgraduate Taught courses with a January start. In AY 2022-23 we announced the largest investment in research degree scholarships in our history and expect to grow admission to our postgraduate research community in AY 2023-244 by 118%.

The University is committed to offering a cosmopolitan and international educational experience, where you really can find the world in one place. To this end we have invested in five regional international offices around the world, and we recruit students from around 130 countries. In managing risk, we have been careful to ensure a diversified portfolio of international recruitment and to avoid overreliance on students from one country. Our total fee income has increased by 12% to £196.7m and fees from international students are now £107.7m, an increase of 47%. With the UK fee frozen at 2018 levels, our ability to recruit international students is vital in allowing us to cross-subsidise UK undergraduate teaching and in ensuring our financial sustainability.

Tuition fee income for AY 2022-23 was above target and we remain hopeful this will be the case for AY 2023-24. Nonetheless we are concerned that our intake of home undergraduates fell for the third year in a row. With improving league table rankings, we will be leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that we recruit our fair share of the growing numbers of potential students in London and the eastern counties and from across the United Kingdom for 2024-25.

Financial Sustainability

The University Council has set a requirement for a minimum of 60 days liquidity which we exceeded with 169 days due to holding £120.8m in cash and deposits and having £40m available from our revolving credit facility with Santander. This leaves us well positioned to continue to refurbish and enhance our estate and infrastructure for teaching and research. As we have paid back loans, our total long-term borrowing has steadily reduced to £140.6 million. The University has been fully compliant with all our banking covenants, and we are on track to remain so. Over the past decade we have grown from being one of the smallest multi-faculty universities in England, to medium size, bringing economies of scale that are essential for our financial sustainability.

The University declared a climate and ecological emergency in December 2020 and has set a date of 2035 to reach net zero scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions. Our Sustainability Sub-strategy sets the aims, objectives and actions to reduce our carbon emissions and further our sustainability work. We have increased the capital committed to carbon reduction work over the next five years and grown the teams working on sustainability and carbon reduction. Our scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions have reduced by almost 17% from a 2019 baseline of 12,500 tCO2e, demonstrating the significant progress being made.

University League Tables

Our improvements across a broad range of performance measures were reflected in the three major domestic league tables. In the Complete University Guide we rose to 32nd (an improvement of seven places) and we were ranked 30th in the Guardian University Guide (an improvement of 12 places this year and a rise of 55 places over the past three publications).

Of particular importance to us – reflecting our commitment to social mobility – we ranked 4th for ‘value added score’ in the Guardian University Guide – a rise of 2 places on last year, and 74 places in two years (from 78th in 2022). The intention of the ‘value added score’ is to assess how departments supported students towards getting good grades, and the extent to which a student exceeded expectations, based on entry qualifications. Regrettably the Times Good University Guide has undergone substantial changes to its methodology, including the complete removal of facilities spend and the use of National Student Satisfaction data from August 2022 rather than the latest data in August 2023.

Education and the Student Experience

The University of Essex Strategic Plan sets out our vision to “put student success at the heart of our mission, supporting every student from every background to achieve outstanding outcomes; preparing our students to thrive in their future lives and nurturing our community of educators to support and promote student success”. We are committed to excellence in education; welcoming students to the University on the basis of their potential, supporting them to fulfil that potential, and transforming the lives of everyone who chooses to study with us.

With the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) shifting in focus to absolute levels of achievement as well as added value, we were pleased to be awarded an overall Silver in the TEF. We have also achieved Silver in both of the new aspect ratings: student experience and student outcomes. Silver indicates that our education has been judged to be very high quality. The panel concluded that “there was strong evidence of typically very high-quality features overall… The panel judged very high-quality to apply to all the provider’s groups of students, including students from underrepresented groups”. The period being assessed was between 2018 and 2022, including the pandemic period. The panel’s judgement was based on metrics from the period (student continuation, completion, satisfaction and graduate outcomes) as well as both an institutional written submission and a student submission.

We were also pleased to see our performance in the National Student Survey (NSS) make a significant recovery, following the pandemic. Times Higher Education (THE) calculated the average score of the 26 questions in the NSS to create a single ‘Overall Positivity Rate’ for mainstream universities. Essex has a score of 80.7%, ranking 28th of English Broad Discipline institutions and just 2.9% from the top 10. All sections (now called themes) show an increase from last year in ranking against the sector including, pleasingly, two areas we have been focussing on this year: a rise of 37 ranking places for the Assessment and Feedback theme and a rise of 31 ranking places for Academic Support. The theme on Learning Opportunities also rose 35 ranking places. It is pleasing to see these rises in ranking, reflecting good levels of student satisfaction. The results do nonetheless indicate some areas where we can do more. For example, despite pleasing rises of 11 and 14 ranking places respectively, the theme on Teaching is still ranked a disappointing 98th and the theme on Student Voice ranks only 72nd nationally. This does not reflect the quality that we aspire to offer. Therefore, we are continuing our efforts to provide high quality teaching, listening carefully to our students’ feedback on how we are doing and developing plans to deliver further improvements.

At Essex we offer a campus based residential experience and are committed to using campus life to create rounded happy and healthy students, well equipped for the world of work, and well positioned to make the world a better place. We want to put Essex on the map for the extra-curricular experience that we offer to our students, through sports, music and arts extra-curricular activities. We are proud of the absolutely vital and positive relationship the University has with our Students’ Union. In the latest NSS it was again ranked in the top 20 of all students' unions in the country and is now firmly established as one of the top students' unions in the UK.

Recognising the importance of nurturing a sense of belonging through events and activities and responding to our changing student profile with more masters and international students than ever before, the SU has run more daytime events than ever and launched art and craft-based ‘SU Makes’ events, for students who want to focus on a quieter activity and different ways to make new friends.

The University and SU took the opportunity to celebrate the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup with the SU Football Fest, a month of celebrations across our three campuses registering 10,000 student bookings to watch the games. As well as bringing our diverse community of students together through football, this also provided an opportunity for our community to debate the hosting of the World Cup in Qatar and run an SU Fireworks evening for 4,500 students.

We have promoted a mobile app to help Essex students meet new friends with more than 8,000 connections made through the app and 24,000 messages sent between students in the same period.

The impact of our welcome work delivered by both the Students’ Union and the University has been encouraging, with 98% of first-year students that we surveyed commenting that they had found the University to be either welcoming or very welcoming.

The total number of student-led societies run by the Students’ Union has increased to 125 with more than 3,600 student members between them, over 100 events happening every month and 8,000 hours logged by Society Executives this year. One of our student societies, the Women in STEM society was recognised by being national finalists for Equality and Diversity in the Bright Networks Awards. Responding to the changing needs of our students we have also redesigned our campus facilities to offer the very best experience, with the SU opening four new spaces for students: our new look SU Bar, The Atrium, The In-between, and the Communities Common Room. The University has also refreshed our food offer, opening five street food stalls and created new and refurbished cafés and restaurants.

An outstanding example of our success in building community on our campuses, our Essex Rebels Women’s Basketball team has the largest average number of spectators of any professional women’s basketball team in the UK. At an International Women’s Day event on 11 March, we broke the record for the largest attendance at a women’s basketball league game in the UK, with 1,505 spectators cheering on the team to victory that day. Essex Rebels also won the prestigious ‘Best Gameday Experience Award’ from Basketball England. The Prize for the men’s National Basketball League One, highlighted the “great atmosphere” and popular performances that have wowed crowds all season.

We remain committed to re-inventing and updating our approach to campus life, to create an even more exciting and re-invigorated experience and have a wide range of initiatives underway in AY 2023-24.

In the light of increasing emphasis given by government to the regulatory environment, we have refreshed our detailed risk assessments of the University’s course provision against the definition of condition B3 of registration with the Office for Students. We found that our data on student success continues to match up well against these targets and we are ever more vigilant to ensure that our students receive the transformational Essex education that they deserve.

Research and Knowledge Exchange

Our 2019-2028 Strategic Plan commits us to growing the number of researchers to around 1,000 for the next Research Excellence Framework. We submitted 702 researchers to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 (up from 339 for REF 2014) and reflecting our performance our Quality Related (QR) core research grant has increased by £4.4m per annum – representing a 63.5% increase in QR income against a sector average increase of 19.3%. In addition, income from research grants and contracts has increased to a record £34.3m and is forecast to grow to £39.9m for AY 2023-24, an increase of 16.3%.

Putting research into action for the benefit of society is part of the DNA of the University. We put nearly £600 million into the regional economy annually and as part of this commitment, we have been working hard to establish an even wider range of connections to business and the public sector over the past few years. As a result, our consultancy has more than doubled over the past four years. Key achievements include:

• Securing £60 million investment for the Knowledge Gateway research and technology park, which includes Parkside Office Village and the Innovation Centre, which forms a regional hub for innovation and a new 40,000 square foot building. This building will be home to our Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing and new health and wellbeing hubs open to the public.
• Consolidating our top position in the UK for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with a portfolio of more than 40 initiatives worth £10m which highlights how we are delivering substantial value to UK business.
• Leading the evaluation of the impact of projects, including ‘A Better Start Southend’, a programme supporting children in areas of deprivation, and an innovative Internet of Things project involving five south London boroughs.
• Enhancing the work of our Angels@Essex platform, developed with University Enterprise Zone funding, which matches investors with businesses needing funding. So far 38 businesses have shared over £19m and a further £9.5m has been raised in an additional 15 funding rounds.
• Establishing a unique £500k partnership with the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, to use state-of-the-art modelling, machine learning and data analytics to deliver improvements to their hospital services.
• Being a founding partner of Freeport East based at Harwich and Felixstowe and supporting new clean energy businesses and the offshore wind industry.
• Collaborating with Tendring District Council in the award of £19m from the Leveling Up Fund to create a Clacton Civic Quarter, which will rejuvenate a key area of the town including the creation of a University of Essex Centre for Coastal Communities based in the town. We hope this will become a national centre of excellence for seaside town regeneration.

We ranked first, again, out of all universities in the UK for the number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships we have been awarded with a portfolio of more than 40 initiatives worth £10m. In the latest Government review of Universities and their Knowledge Exchange activities, we were ranked 3rd in our comparator group and 12th overall in the UK for our performance across a range of areas. We featured in the top 20% for our work with the public and third sector and for our performance in terms of commercialisation. And we were in the top 40% for work on local growth and regeneration, public and community engagement, working with businesses, and graduate start-ups. These achievements fed directly into our Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (HEBCIS) return which, in turn, determined how much Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) grant we received. In 2018-19, our HEIF allocation was £2.1m. In 2022-23, as a result of our continual improvement in Knowledge Exchange our HEIF grant almost doubled to £3.77m – our highest ever allocation.

Cost of Living

External research suggests nearly 20% of students in the UK have considered dropping out of their courses because of concerns over money. Working with our Students’ Union, we responded quickly with a package that included:

• Restricting the increase in rent for all University owned and managed accommodation to below the cost of inflation for Academic Year 2022-23, at a cost of £1.3m.
• Establishing our student hardship funding at £1.5m for this academic year.
• Spending £350k on introducing a daily hot meal for £2 in our on-campus food outlets.
• Promoting the wide range of free activities and events available to students.
• Removing the cost of re-sit fees.
• Paying the Voluntary Living Wage for University and SU student jobs.
• Investing £100k to fund 7,500 hours of work in part-time roles for our students in Colchester and Southend.

This amounted to a support package of £4m and the scale and speed of its introduction has received national recognition. This is welcome, but we took the steps we did because it was the right thing to do. Against a significant national decline in students staying the course at other universities, we are also pleased that it has resulted in a very welcome increase in our undergraduate continuation rates.

Other Successes

• We ranked 56th in the world this year (a rise from 76th last year) in the global rankings for sustainability out of some 1,600 universities.
• We ranked 24th for international outlook in the Times Higher Education World Rankings.
• The University of Essex’s beloved Wivenhoe Park has preserved its status among Britain’s top outdoor spaces after winning the Green Flag Award.
• British Council Alumni awards – Essex had 12 shortlisted individuals from nine different countries, two Global finalists, three National finalists, and one National winner.
• Essex has received the joint highest number of shortlisted entries at the Times Higher Education Awards 2023, dubbed the 'Oscars' of higher education. For the first time, Essex has been shortlisted in a total of four categories of the Times Higher Education Awards: International Collaboration of the Year, Most Innovative Teacher, Outstanding Support for Students, and Research Project of the Year (STEM). The outcome will be known in November 2023.

Capital Developments

This year will see completion of a new 40,000 square foot building at the entrance to our Colchester Campus. In addition to being the home of our Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing and new health and wellbeing hubs open to the public, following the success of Parkside Office Village, it will also provide lettable commercial space, strengthening our links with business and the community. Through our Pastures development on our Colchester Campus, 1,262 new study bedrooms will be available from September 2024. The University has increased capacity at our main Colchester Campus by 74% since 2013, reflecting student number growth of 53% in the same period. We are nearing completion of a project to re-clad our student residences at University Square Southend, and we are pursuing legal redress for the cost of this work from third parties vigorously.

Alongside these developments, we have made significant investments in research equipment and new technology to further enable efficient and secure hybrid working.

We have also invested in reshaping our teaching and learning facilities to ensure they are world class including: our Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths Centre which has new state of the art collaborative learning spaces and interdisciplinary teaching facilities, our Causeway Teaching Centre with 15 new teaching rooms over three floors with the ability to provide flexible learning environments; Studio X, our digital creative collaborative studio and student start-up programme, has a state of the art AI/AR, 360 VR Video and animation studios; and we have expanded teaching space for our Health provision which provides teaching capacity for 300 students, including a replica nursing suite, occupational therapy teaching spaces, and consultation training spaces. Future plans include £50m for investments in Teaching and Research facilities over the next five years, as well as another £9m investment in the student experience and student housing. We have also increased and accelerated our investment in sustainable campuses to £14.2m for urgent energy reduction projects and the reduction of carbon longer term.

External environment

In 2020, we took out fixed price contracts for energy until September 2024, and recently fixed them again from October 2024. This has given us some time to maximise our investment in energy generation and conservation to avoid significant increases in costs and enable reductions in our carbon footprint. It was also with good foresight that we arranged a revolving credit facility with Santander for £40 million, incorporating discounts for green initiatives, that we can deploy to address this critical agenda and meet our Climate and Ecological Emergency Commitment to reach net zero by 2035.

In common with many other universities during the pandemic, we delayed our capital investment plan to conserve our cash balances. We have relaunched our re-prioritised plans for refurbishing and improving our infrastructure but are conscious that the value of our cash balances is being eroded by inflation. Therefore, I’m very grateful for the work of our Investment Committee and staff in securing over £3.4m in investment income, in comparison with £0.25m in the previous year.

People

I am delighted that Dr Sarah Perry, author of the Essex Serpent, accepted our invitation to be the next Chancellor of the University of Essex. Our wonderful Vice-Chancellor, Professor Anthony Forster announced his decision to retire at the end of the 2023-24 academic year, having led the University through a period of extraordinary growth and achievement since August 2012. The task of finding a successor to Anthony has begun and we hope to announce an appointee early in 2024. I am sure there will be opportunities to thank Anthony for his contribution as the University enters its 60th year.

I wish to offer my sincere thanks to four outstanding members of Council who concluded their service on the University Council at the end of AY 2022-23. Milan Makwana served on Council from August 2014, completing a full nine-year term of office in July 2023. Milan served as a Pro-Chancellor from February 2019. We benefitted from Milan’s expertise in human resources strategy and management. Alexa Coates joined Council in November 2017, serving over five years. Alexa’s financial expertise was very valuable; providing an authoritative and independent voice in positive meetings with the University’s banks and bond holder during the pandemic to give just one example. Stephanie Hilborne joined Council in April 2019, and made very valuable contributions to shaping our Sustainability Sub-Strategy and our Policy on Tackling Misogyny, Harassment, Sexism, and Sexual Violence Against Women which resulted directly from Stephanie’s insights and understanding of these issues. As President of the Students’ Union (SU), Nashwa Alsakka was a member of Council for AY 2022-23 and we are very grateful for her leadership in supporting students and placing the SU on a sustainable financial footing in the post-pandemic environment.

I would like to welcome four new members to Council: Julie Bentley, Ajit Menon, Mickola Wilson and Alan Newman who joins us as Treasurer designate to enable a smooth handover from Tim Porter with full effect from 1 August 2024. There has been so much happening at the University that time has passed very quickly and it seems extraordinary that this is my sixth year as Chair of Council. While I will miss it very much, I am very happy that the University Council will be in exceptionally good hands when Melanie Leech takes over as Chair on 1 August 2024 when I will have completed the maximum term of nine years as an external member of Council.

We are also grateful to Professor Andrew Le Sueur who concluded six years as Executive Dean for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, over-seeing the introduction of Edge Hotel School as a successful academic department of the University and the expansion of the Essex Law School to be one of the largest in the country, ranked 3rd for research power.

In conclusion

The University has recovered well from the pandemic, but we are not complacent about the challenges that we face and the fragility of student recruitment. Alongside our Essex 2025 initiative, we continue to have robust planning systems in place, an effective approach to risk management, and are encouraged by recognition of our progress in university league tables. We also know that there is no long-term substitute for strong UK undergraduate student recruitment, and we must capitalise upon our bounce back success by regaining our share of home undergraduate students. It remains for me to thank the Vice-Chancellor and the University executive team as well as staff and students for all their hard work in making AY 2022-23 a very successful year. We have a history of understanding where we came from as well as where we are trying to go. I am delighted that we can look forward to our 60th anniversary year with a great deal of confidence about our future.

Jane Hamilton
Chair of Council
27 November 2023

Highlights from 2022-23

• 19,000+ students (Headcount)
• 8,000+ new students
• 125,000+ alumni
• 1st in the UK for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
• TOP 25 for international outlook (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023)
• TOP 60 in the global Times Higher Education Impact

Research Power

• 5 subjects in the UK Top 10 (Research Excellence Framework 2021, Times Higher Education)
• KTP Academic of the Year Award Dr Faiyaz Doctor from School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (Innovate UK Awards 2022)

Research Quality

• 4 social science subjects in the UK Top 10 (Research Excellence Framework 2021)
• TOP 30 for positive student feedback (National Student Survey 2023, English broad discipline institutions)

We remain a key member of the Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) and the Young European Research Universities Network (YERUN).

Strategic Report

Objectives and strategy

Our mission is to deliver excellence in education and research, for the benefit of individuals and communities. We are proud to offer a transformational research-led education, welcoming students to the University based on their potential, helping them to fulfil that potential, and transforming the lives of everyone who chooses to study at Essex.

Emerging from the pandemic we are operating in a rapidly changing national and global higher education sector which presents a range of opportunities as global student mobility recommences. In order to maximise the benefits of these opportunities we have invested in flexible and agile systems through our Smart Working at Essex programme, and significantly increased our student-facing facilities, support and teaching infrastructure. This ensures all students have access to the excellent facilities and receive the support they need to succeed. Our recent growth in academic staff who are delivering world-leading research continues to underpin our approach to transformational research-led education. Through continued investment over the last year, we have grown academic staff numbers by 6%, keeping the University on track to achieve 1,000 research active staff by the next REF.

Financial performance during 2022-23

The financial performance of the University remains strong, delivering an accounting surplus of £20.2m and a cash surplus (measured as the surplus for the year plus non-cash transactions (depreciation and movements in investment property valuations, fixed asset investments and provisions) less capital grants and loan principal repayments) of £19.2m (5.8%). Key factors supporting this outcome are increased fee income (up £20.6m year-on-year) and a £4.4m increase in our core research grant, reflecting the financial reward of pursuing our strategy to increase the number of research academic staff submitted to REF 2021 to 701, from 339 submitted to REF 2014. There has been significant investment in staffing to both support the levels of student recruitment achieved in 2022-23, further improve student-staff ratios and to seek to build up future capacity in areas where growing demand can be anticipated. This strategy is reflected by an increase in staffing costs of £16m across the past two years.

Further year-on-year recovery has been experienced within Campus Services, returning to a surplus for the first time since the pandemic. The surplus delivered was £3.7m versus a deficit of £3.5m in 2021-22. The most significant financial improvement across the two years was within Accommodation Essex (Colchester) delivering a surplus of £7m versus a break-even position in 2020-21, reflecting the increased uptake as numbers in accommodation improved following the disruption during the pandemic.

To counter the impact of rising inflation on the University’s cost base, the University was able to secure £3.5m through cash investment & interest returns; this is an increase of £3.3m on 2021-22 (£0.2m 2021-22) and is a result of careful cash management and diligent placement of funds in a range of short and long-term fixed interest instruments, including the Fasanara Capital Global Diversified Alternative Debt Fund.

Total student population is close to 16,500, representing an increase of around 2% versus 2021-22.

Our research grant and contract income reached a new record high of £34.3m, growing by 14%, with all faculties surpassing the previous year’s performance levels. The indirect costs recovered from this activity also saw strong growth of 5% rising to £7m, our second highest level since 2019.

	2021-22 £000	2022-23 £000	Year-on-year movement
Research contract income	30,164	34,331	+4,167
Research contract indirect costs recovered	6,694	7,021	+327

Increasing academic staff numbers remains a key priority. Over the 12-month period from August 2022 to July 2023, average academic staff numbers increased by 59 FTE (6%) and total staff numbers by 182 FTE (7%). Whilst the very welcome growth in academic staff is very positive, the significant increase in academic staff has and will have an impact on a number of KPIs where we use per member of staff measures to judge progress towards our KPIs, including research income and citations. As staff settle in, we are sure their contribution will impact positively on these KPI measures. We estimate that our HESA reported student to staff ratio (SSR) will improve from 14.6:1 in 2021-22 to 14.3:1 in 2022-23.

Capital investment

The Capital Investment Plan (CIP) supports the delivery of the University’s Strategy and its commitment to excellence in education and research and to growing to a community of about 20,000 students and about 1,000 research active staff for the next REF.

A revised CIP was agreed by Council in July 2023. Included within the CIP are projects to support the growth and sustainability of the University with the aim to repurpose existing space where possible.

Following the development of the University’s Sustainability Sub-Strategy, consideration is being given to how the University can make a just and equitable transition to net zero carbon emissions and to reducing its impact on the environment. The revised Capital Investment Plan incorporates significant investment for sustainability-led projects, to deliver our Sustainability Sub-Strategy, and with respect to our climate and ecological imperatives.

The categories of project identified for potential investment within the capital plan are as follows:

• Research infrastructure
• Supporting growth
• Student experience
• New ways of working and learning
• Digital resilience
• Essential infrastructure and compliance
• Climate emergency
• Revenue generation/invest to save.

	2020-21 £000	2021-22 £000	2022-23 £000
Total investment	£14,426	£14,113	£23,016

Major Projects in 2022-23 included:

• Smart Working at Essex (SWAE) Phase 1 – This £7.9m project is almost complete and we have moved into Phase 2 (£1.3m). Phase 1 included the re-configuration of the University’s estate at both Colchester and Southend to enable growth and to improve the digital infrastructure to facilitate flexible and innovative working both on campus and remotely. Phase 2 continues the roll out across the University of the digital infrastructure.
• Investment in Sports Facilities of £408k including replacement synthetic sports pitch, new performance analysis and coaching room for University teams, upgraded lighting in the sports arena and refurbishment of the Time Out space.
• Research – Expenditure on Research Equipment in 2022-23 totalled £3.6m. Some of this expenditure was externally funded. Within this amount £1.1m expenditure was incurred on the Smart Technology and Experimental Plant Suite (STEPS) which will provide state of the art growth facilities for our fundamental and applied plant-based research.
• Parkside Phase 3a – The Parkside Phase 3a building is nearing completion with handover expected in November 2023. Work has now started to fit out the ground floor which will house the Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing (IPHW) and Health and Wellbeing Care Hub (HWCH) to support our ambitions to develop specialist research, workforce development and clinical facilities/services. The remaining floors will be commercially let and represent an extension of the Parkside Office Village on the Knowledge Gateway site.

Sport at Essex

As a campus-based university, sport plays an absolutely vital role in offering the best possible student experience, and creating the living and learning community that is central to the transformational education offered at Essex. During the past year we have pioneered some sector leading initiatives to enhance the student experience, and to benefit our local communities.

Fan Experience Project

Utilising the asset of the £12m Essex Sport Arena, opened in 2018, we have delivered a programme of weekly spectator sport events on campus that have attracted crowds of students, staff and the local community. Over the competitive sport season, a total of over 13,000 spectators watched our student sport teams in BUCS matches, and our Essex Rebels basketball and volleyball teams in national competitions. This was capped off by a British record-breaking audience for a Women’s British Basketball League, when 1,505 spectators saw our Essex Rebels team claim victory on our International Women’s Day special. The quality of the entertainment on offer was recognised by Basketball England who awarded us their national ‘gameday entertainment’ award.

We also created a first of its kind in the U.K., student supporters’ section, called the ‘Tribe’, which attracted 800 student members in its first year. As part of creating a culture of attendance on campus, the Tribe offers an inclusive and accessible social environment on campus that provides a new social environment at match days, and other social occasions. This innovation was recognised by the Colleges and Universities Business Officers (CUBO) who awarded us their national award for ‘innovation in student experience’.

Essex Rebels Community Programmes

Our men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball teams play in the national elite leagues under the name ‘Essex Rebels’. Alongside attracting large crowds to watch the teams at the Essex Sport Arena, we have also used this programme to benefit our local communities.

The Essex Rebels junior basketball programme has grown rapidly from inception in 2018, and now has over 300 children playing weekly in national league teams, after school clubs and children’s drop-in sessions. Alongside that over 2,000 children have attended the ‘Rebels Roadshow’ where sports scholarship students attend local schools, deliver assemblies and P.E. sessions, and act as inspirational role models for local children to pursue their own dreams in sport and education. Our sports scholarship students also work on a collaboration with Essex Police called ‘ballin’ with a bobby’, delivering basketball sessions in local parks and providing a medium for local youth and children to meet and talk with police officers.

F.A. Women’s High Performance Football Centre

In the past year we were selected by the Football Association to be the regional centre for the development of women’s football. This initiative focusses on developing the future workforce of coaches and support staff who will inspire the next generation of Lionesses, and working closely with the School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences, this will place Essex graduates at the forefront of women’s football in England.

Debt, liabilities and liquidity

Despite the need to secure higher returns to counter the impact of inflation, cash continues to be managed prudently and losses due to the fixed interest investments have, very largely, been avoided. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments decreased to £101.8m (2021-22: £111.7m) over the year. The University Council set a requirement for a minimum of 60 days liquidity, and we achieved 169 days of general expenditure (excluding depreciation) at 31st July 2023, compared with 2021-22’s figure of 178 days. Total long-term debt outstanding at 31 July 2023 was £140.6m (2021-22 £142.8m). The University was fully compliant with its banking covenants and is on track to remain so in the foreseeable future.

2022-23 Performance Updates

Many positive performance outcomes have been achieved across 2022-23.

Guardian University Guide 2024

• Essex moved up 12 places to rank 30th in the Guardian University Guide 2024, our highest ever rank in this table. In doing so this represented a 55 place rank improvement over the last three publications. Essex ranked 4th nationally in The Guardian’s value added metric – a metric that indicates the extent to which a student exceeded expectations, based on entry qualifications.

Complete University Guide 2024

• Essex moved up seven places to 32nd in the Complete University Guide 2024 – ranking 3rd nationally for facilities spend and 10th for academic services. We are also 30th for research intensity.

National Student Survey (NSS) 2023

• Our performance in the National Student Survey showed great improvement this year, with the University ranking 28th for Overall Positivity of English Broad Discipline institution (100 institutions). Further, rank performance improved on all but one of the sections of the NSS, and found Essex sits above the benchmark performance in six of the questions (with nineteen in line with benchmark).
• The Times Good University Guide did not use NSS 2023, because of its late publication. We have created a proxy measure, had they used the 2023 data, to illustrate how this might have performed. This proxy found an expected rank improvement of about +35 places, to 44th, on the actual result last year.

Graduate Outcomes

• This year’s Graduate Outcomes survey (surveying 2020-21 graduates) found 92% of our biggest population – undergraduate, UK, full time students – were in some level of employment or further study 15 months after graduation, ranking us joint 4th of English Broad Discipline institutions.
• The majority of departments showed year on year improvement in the proportion of their students (same population as above) in professional level employment and/or further study (eleven of seventeen departments).

Student-Staff Ratio

• The Student Staff Ratio at Essex has seen year on year improvement and in doing so meeting our target ratios. The ratio improved from 16.0 to 14.6 over the past two years and is expected to be 14.3 this year. As such Essex improved +21 places in the Complete University Guide and Times Good University Guide, and +20 places in the Guardian university Guide on this metric.

Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF)

• The third iteration of the KEF saw Essex rank 14th in the sector overall (previously joint 12th), 3rd in Cluster X (previously joint 3rd), and achieved our target of being in the top 50% for all perspectives.
• Essex has achieved high or very high engagement in 5 of the 7 KEF perspectives, and met or exceeded the Cluster X average for 6 of the 7 perspectives.
• Essex ranked 4th in the sector for the “working with the public and third sector” perspective.
• Essex continues to be ranked in the top 15 best performing institutions in the Sector for KEF 3

Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024

• Essex remains ranked in the 301-350 bracket in this year’s THE World University Rankings publication, having ranked there in the last four publications. Of UK institutions ranked in this table, Essex moved up 3 places to 36th.
• Within this table, Essex have now moved up to =15th in the world for ‘International Outlook’, which examines the proportion of international staff, students and international co-authorship on research publications. Essex also now ranks inside the top 300 for the THE World University Rankings' newly titled ‘Research Quality’ (replacing ‘Citations’) measure having seen a 174 place rise this year.

Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 2023

• We have been awarded overall TEF Silver in this year’s TEF cycle, as well as Silver awards in both of the new elements: student experience and student outcomes. Silver indicates that “the student experience and outcomes are typically very high quality, and there may be some outstanding features”.
• Within the TEF datasets provided there were numerous examples of areas where performance hugely exceeded the benchmark performance across several subjects and characteristics splits, but there are some subject areas where performance fell below the benchmark and this issue of consistency continues to be a key area to address.
• As this TEF cycle assessed the period 2018-2022, we now have an extra year of data to assess at an early stage the performance that will underpin the next TEF submission in 2027. This early insight shows the latest data, which will constitute the first year of the next cycle, sits above benchmark on each of the Continuation, Completion and Progression (Graduate outcomes) measures. Further, our improved performance in the NSS, evidenced by not sitting beneath the benchmark on any section, sets us up well for the next TEF cycle.

Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2023

• Essex rose in to the top 60 in the Times Higher Education (THE) World Impact Rankings this year, climbing 20 places to rank 56th out of 1,591 institutions across the world in the prestigious THE Impact Rankings, which recognise universities for making a difference to society and working towards a more sustainable future.
• This measures universities against the Sustainable Development Goals and this year Essex was ranked in the top 100 globally for nine of these 17 goals. The highlights were being ranked 17th for Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, 18th for Reduced Inequalities, 27th for Responsible Consumption and Production, 28th for Gender Equality, 31st for Life Below Water, and 45th for Climate Action.

We are delighted to report that in our second submission to the THE Impact Rankings, the University of Essex achieved a world ranking of 56th out of 1,591 participating universities. This marks an increase of 30 places compared to the previous year which is a pleasing reflection of our commitment and continual efforts towards improving sustainable development.

Of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the University of Essex was ranked 17th in the World for SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, 18th for SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities, 27th for SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production, and 28th for SDG 5 Gender Equality. In addition, we were ranked in the top 100 globally for a further five SDG’s including SDG 1 No Poverty (58th), SDG13 Climate Action (45th), SDG 14 Life Below Water (31st), SDG 15 Life on Land (79th), and SDG 17 Partnership for the Goals (45th).

Our strong performance in the Impact Rankings demonstrate how our efforts to operate in more sustainable ways are helping us to evolve as a university fit for the future. The result also reflects the world-leading contributions that our academic community continues to make through education and research in topics that have the greatest relevance and importance to the future of science, society, and humanity.

In 2020, the University of Essex declared a climate and ecological emergency accompanied by a detailed action plan, setting out the practical steps we are taking towards becoming carbon net zero by 2035. We take our promise very seriously and are continually acting and making new investments to ensure that not only are we improving the carbon footprint of our campuses but are also developing innovative education and research practices that are sustainable without compromising on excellence.

In our third Sustainable Development Report, which we have recently published, we are delighted to provide a more detailed update of our performance in relation to each of the SDG’s which also incorporates the full results of our 2023 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. We are also happy to present a selection of examples of activities we have carried out in the last year that have made a positive contribution to each SDG.

Measuring the contribution of the University in progressing each of the Sustainable Development Goals is not easy. This is because during the past decade The University of Essex publishes on average 1,900 research outputs per year and we have approximately 3,000 different programmes of study including undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees. That’s a lot of reading and it would be impossible to directly map every goal against each research paper and degree course. Instead, we have adopted keyword methodologies commonly used across the higher education sector, including the THE Impact Ranking which we have submitted to for the first time this year.

There are two commonly used keyword sets for each of the Sustainable development goals. The first set was developed by the Asia/Pacific Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) which is very broad and the other is the Elsevier keyword set which is used by the Times Higher Education and is much narrower. For our research we have used both keyword sets to search our publications using the Scopus indexing service, reporting the number of publications and citations Essex has achieved for each goal from 2012 to 2023. For our education we have indicated how many programmes relate to each SDG and how many student interactions there have been across these programmes since 2012.

1 http://ap-unsdsn.org/regional-initiatives/universities-sdgs/

2 https://service.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/31662/supporthub/scopuscontent/

Table 1: Research Publications and Citations Associated with each Sustainable Development Goal

	Publications		Citations
	SGSN	Elsevier	SGSN	Elsevier
SDG 1: No Poverty	3527	54	63484	494
SDG 2: Zero Hunger	2585	88	62099	2486
SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being	2384	1702	45929	36863
SDG 4: Quality Education	1502	32	22786	464
SDG 5: Gender Equality	1858	131	26770	1349
SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation	985	23	21399	321
SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy	1509	281	32266	6087
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth	4027	252	61844	4899
SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure	4963	65	87931	3185
SDG 10: Reduced Inequality	4955	281	77462	4480
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	2961	124	61639	1898
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production	2766	126	56870	2433
SDG 13: Climate Action	972	249	24296	6356
SDG 14: Life Below Water	543	179	16314	4908
SDG 15: Life On Land	1478	79	37842	3124
SDG 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions	2861	748	38908	8720
SDG 17: Partnerships to achieve the SDG	233	N/A	4511	N/A

Table 2: Degrees Associated with each Sustainable Development Goal and Student Engagements

	Relevant Degrees		Student Engagements
	SGSN	Elsevier	SGSN	Elsevier
SDG 1: No Poverty	880	141	13746	1090
SDG 2: Zero Hunger	673	9522	9522	56
SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being	537	336	7366	4432
SDG 4: Quality Education	621	26	6731	167
SDG 5: Gender Equality	584	164	7803	985
SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation	232	2	1577	21
SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy	255	14	1886	152
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth	993	157	17106	1185
SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure	1219	15	16438	30
SDG 10: Reduced Inequality	1060	193	17821	1308
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	626	27	7943	156
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production	545	101	6794	1373
SDG 13: Climate Action	208	152	1596	994
SDG 14: Life Below Water	195	61	1996	297
SDG 15: Life On Land	293	22	222	169
SDG 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions	629	350	9469	3724
SDG 17: Partnerships to achieve the SDG	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Future outlook and prospects

Despite the reduction in the number of 18-year-olds choosing to go to university, nationally, we remain optimistic about our plans to grow our University community to 1,000 researchers and circa. 20,000 students by the next Research Excellence Framework exercise expected in 2028. We are leaving no stone unturned, working closely with existing and new partners and through our regional international offices and schools' network to ensure that as many students as possible benefit from a transformative education with us.

Our ability to generate sufficient cash surpluses each year is key to delivering our mission and the scale of our ambitions. As a result of our declaration of a climate and ecological emergency, our focus on refurbishing existing buildings to ensure they serve the needs of our time – including new and more flexible ways of working rather than new builds – and a focus on developing our academic and professional services staff, mark an important and exciting evolution in our investment strategy.

Risk

Policy and approach

The University maintains a risk management policy, which forms part of the University’s internal control and corporate governance arrangements. The policy explains the University’s underlying approach to risk management and documents the roles and responsibilities of the University Council, the University Steering Group (USG) and other key parties. It also outlines key aspects of the risk management process and identifies the main reporting procedures. In addition, it describes the process the University Council follows to evaluate the effectiveness of the institution’s internal control procedures.

The following principles underlie the University’s approach to risk management and internal control:

• Council has responsibility for overseeing risk management within the institution as a whole.
• The Vice-Chancellor and University Steering Group (the University’s Executive) advise the Council and implements the policies it approves.
• The Audit and Risk Management Committee (ARMC) provides Council with independent assurance about the effectiveness of the University’s risk management arrangements.
• External Audit has an overview of the policy, making comments and recommendations of practical benefit.
• Internal Audit provides ARMC and Council with independent assurance about the effectiveness of the University’s risk management arrangements.
• The institution makes prudent recognition and disclosure of the financial and non-financial implications of risks.
• Heads of Departments and Heads of Section are responsible for developing awareness of risks within their units, and for identifying risks inherent in new developments.
• Key risk indicators are identified and monitored regularly.

Risk Appetite

The University recognises that risk appetite varies according to the activity undertaken and has developed a matrix determining the level of willingness to accept risks in pursuit of its strategic objectives. The approach is to minimise exposure to risks in the areas that relate to Health and Safety, regulatory compliance and the University’s duty of care to staff and students, whilst accepting and encouraging the active management of risk in order to pursue strategic priorities as defined in the University Strategy 2019-28. The matrix maps the University’s risk appetite against key strategic aims and compares the potential impact if things were to go wrong against the benefits if opportunities are realised; progress in realising those benefits is measured using a set of Key Performance Indicators, providing a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively the University is achieving key business objectives.

Risk ownership and management

The Registrar and Secretary, as the Risk Management Process Owner, is responsible to the Vice-Chancellor and USG for ensuring the operational effectiveness of the University’s risk management procedures. The Risk Management Group (RMG), chaired by the Director of Finance, Planning and Data Insight, provides guidelines on the assessment of risk in planning and decision-making and monitors compliance. The Director of Finance, Planning and Data Insight ensures that the Strategic Risk Register (SRR) is properly maintained, that the relevant preventive and recovery measures are implemented, and that a sufficiently comprehensive set of risk management plans are maintained.

For control of operational level areas, Faculties, Departments and Professional Services sections maintain local operational risk registers that identify risks and relevant mitigating actions. Local risk management groups conduct operational risk register reviews at least once a year and material changes (the addition of new risks, the removal of risks and significant changes to risk ratings) are reported to RMG on a cyclical basis.

This provides a clear route for risk identification and escalation. Risk owners are also required to report on the potential impact of risks on the Strategic Risk Register as well as any associated resource, legal, regulatory or equality implications, which require consideration by the University. Operational risk register updates enable RMG to understand local issues and to check consistency in scoring across broad risk themes; these, along with the strategic insight of RMG members and their knowledge of changes in the internal and external environment, allow RMG to assess the Strategic Risk Register critically on a termly basis.

Major movements in the risk environment and the University’s risk profile are then drawn to the attention of USG and ARMC by way of termly reports. This allows members of the executive team and external committee members to bring to bear their different perspectives, knowledge and experiences when scrutinising and contributing to the development of the Strategic Risk Register, ensuring that key areas of risk are not overlooked.

USG provides information to Council and to ARMC on a regular basis and will report on major risks and associated ameliorative measures. Council, which is responsible for reviewing the effectiveness of the internal control and risk management framework of the institution, will, on the basis of the information provided by the annual report of the Audit and Risk Management Committee; by the annual report provided by Internal Audit and by any other information provided by University Steering Group, form a view on the effectiveness of the risk management framework. It provides guidance to USG on ways in which procedures may need to be improved. The Risk Management Policy is reviewed annually by the Risk Management Group, ensuring that the policy is updated periodically to ensure that it remains fit-for-purpose and in line with best practice.

Key risks

The University’s vision for 2028 is to be recognised nationally (top 30 Times Good University Guide) and Globally (top 200 Times Higher Education World University Rankings) for the quality and impact of our transformational education and for the international excellence and world-leading quality, scale and impact of our research. The risk of the University not meeting its targets for overall performance and national and international ranking and academic standing has been evaluated as the highest rated strategic risk.

Essex saw improvements in SSR (+21 places), UCAS entry points (+9 places), and Good Degrees (+7 paces) in the latest publication of the Times Good University Guide. These changes, along with an improved Student Satisfaction performance in the NSS 2023, were expected to result in a substantial improvement in overall rank. However, due to changes in the composition of the league table this year, this resulted in a –2 rank fall. When modelling to account for these changes not having been carried out, we would have expected an overall rank in the top 30. This gives us confidence that the actions the institution is undertaking puts us on a positive trajectory that we are in a position to meet our targets in this area.

We aspire to offer transformational education to about 20,000 students, to achieve transformational research through a community of about 1,000 researchers and to extend the knowledge base by investing in new disciplines that meet the needs of our time and to ensure the financial sustainability of the University. A reduction in the size of our undergraduate Home/EU population has presented a risk to us achieving these aims but we have been agile in our response through the development of growth and sustainability plans; this has resulted in new product delivery and international and postgraduate student growth to mitigate what we anticipate being a short-term reduction in the Home/EU market. This has put the University in a strong position to be confident of meeting its growth targets by the end of the strategic planning period.

The growth and changing shape of our student population does however present an ongoing challenge when it comes to providing adequate facilities that align with our ambitious growth and sustainability plans. Our Estates team is actively engaged in adapting our facilities to meet these evolving needs, adopting a proactive approach to physical infrastructure works with the ability to forward plan.

The risk of cyber-attacks is a sustained threat to our digital estate, but the University has embedded a range of cyber security controls and processes which measure defence maturity against industry best practice frameworks to ensure we are best placed to respond when required.

The University recognises that the ability to recruit, develop and retain high quality staff is critical to achieving its strategic objectives. The staff recruitment market was particularly challenging during and in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic as the dust was settling on new hybrid working practices. The University however put in place additional measures to bolster recruitment opportunities through an onboarding and recruitment process review, and recent recruitment success across the board has meant that the associated strategic risk has been placed on positive watch.

Key Performance Indicators

Progress against key performance indicators, set in accordance with the University Strategy 2019-2028, is summarised in the table below. Further below is a commentary on those indicators where we are performing well, improving or continuing to work hard to see the performance to which we aim.

	Completion of 2022-23 Target	Latest Data	Performance at completion of 2022-23		Performance at completion of 2021-22
			Rank	Value	Rank	Value
1 - TGUG Rank1	30th	TGUG 2024	56th	594	54th	598
Guardian University Guide	-	GUG 2024	30th	63.5	42nd	70.8
Complete University Guide	-	CUG 2024	32nd	712	39th	674
Daily Mail University Guide	-	DMUG 2024	41st	722	N/A	N/A
2 - THE-WUR Rank	250th	THE-WUR 2024	326th	52.0	308th	48.5
3 - TEF	Gold	TEF 2023	Silver	Silver	Gold	Gold
4 - Student Satisfaction2	25th	NSS 2023	44th	81.3%	79th	73.0%
5 - Graduate Outcomes	25th	TGUG 2024	77th	75.2%	68th	72.6%
6 - Student Outcomes (E&D) a. Progressions3	<10%	2022-23 Entrants	-	35.5%	-	53.2%
6 - Student Outcomes (E&D) b. Good Degrees3	<10%	2022-23 Leavers	-	27.6%	-	22.8%
6 - Student Outcomes (E&D) c. Graduate Outcomes3	<10%	2021-22 Leavers	-	3.3%	-	7.6%
7 - Research Degree a. Completion	70%	2022-23	-	93%	-	90%
7 - Research Degree b. Awards	0.22	2021-22	-	0.20	6th	0.22
8 - Research Quality	20th	TGUG 2024	41st	50	41st	50
9 - Citation Rates	40th	2018-22	81st	10.2	80th	9.1
10 - Research Income a. Income/Staff FTE4	20th	2021-22	43rd	£48,649	46th	£52,039
10 - Research Income b. Income from Industry	£9.7m	2021-22	14th	£4,539,000	16th	£4,181,000
10 - Research Income c. HE-BCI Income	£33.4m	2021-22	12th	£28,460,000	12th	£25,685,000
11 - Financial Sustainability a. Cash Surplus/Deficit	5.5%	2022-23	-	5.8%	-	4.9%
11 - Financial Sustainability b. Institutional Liquidity Days	60	2022-23	-	169	-	180
11 - Financial Sustainability c. Institutional Borrowing	>2	2022-23	-	3.6	-	3.5

1 KPI-01: Council approved the change to the KPI-01 target (top 25) to Top 30 by 2028 – approved Spring 2023

2 KPI-04: Essex would normally use what was published in the TGUG to populate this KPI. However, this year the TGUG did not update their Student Satisfaction measure and therefore we do not have a new indicator. Therefore, instead, we have produced latest performance from the 2023 iteration of the NSS, using a TGUG-based proxy measure to illustrate what our performance would have been had they used this latest data.

3 KPI-06a,b,c: Council approved a change to how we view progress, assessing proportion of flags rather than absolute numbers which can change due to population size rather than changes in performance – approved Spring 2023. As a result of that previous year’s performance has been changed to reflect this also.

4 KPI-10a: Council approved a change to the methodology of calculation comparing research income of the current year against the staff FTE of two years prior – approved Spring 2023. As a result of that previous year’s performance has been changed to reflect this also.

Consistently performing well

• KPI-06c – Student Outcomes (E&D) Graduate Outcomes. This KPI measures the extent of gaps for students achieving high level employment/further study in six protected characteristics. The proportion of gaps across our departments, across five characteristic groups of students has fallen to just 3.3% (representing just two instances of performance gaps out of 60 combinations). This is the third year in a row of improved performance and all year subsequent years perform better than the baseline year.
• KPI-07a – Research Degree Completion. This is, and has remained throughout, well above the target set, having grown once again this year (to 93% completion), the fourth year of sustained improvement.
• KPI-10b – Industry Income. This year we recorded our highest ever income from industry figure showing consistent years of strong growth either side of the pandemic, and an immediate bounce back from the disruption caused by the pandemic. This latest income is 175% of the 2019 baseline figure.
• KPI-11a, -11b, -11c – Financial Sustainability. These all remain green exceeding targets based on provisional final figures (awaiting outcome of audits).

Steady improvement

• KPI-01 – TGUG Rank: fell by 2 rank positions this year. However, the fall here is in spite of improvement in many of the component metrics, but because of the choices made by the table compilers, these improvements are not reflected. Had they been included, Essex would have ranked in the region of 27th and thus would be exceeding the KPI target.
• Last year, the Services/Facilities Spend metric was removed from the TGUG league table and this remains removed. This was a metric for which Essex would have ranked first in the sector in each of the last two years and we predicted would have resulted in an approximate +15 place rank improvement overall. This year, due to the later publication of the National Student Survey (NSS) 2023 results the TGUG took the decision to not only not use the latest data and instead use NSS 2022 results, but also to maintain the same method as that used last year. Had they used the NSS 2023 results, we anticipated a rise of approximately +10 places. Last year the TGUG took the decision to change the Tariff metric to account for pre-pandemic entry levels, they have kept this methodology again. This uses 2019-20 entrants double weighted and then combined with 2021-22 entrants. Essex has done considerable work on the data and the entry level of our students to greatly increase our tariff levels since 2019. Had they used the 2021-22 entrant’s dataset only, we anticipated a rise of approximately +2 places.
• With these three choices made by the TGUG compliers, we estimate this has resulted in a rank difference for Essex of approximately 29 places, whereby we would have expected a ranking in the region of 27th rather than a ranking now
  of 56th.
• We use the TGUG as a way of benchmarking and monitoring our performance, but there are three other domestic league tables (the Guardian University Guide, Complete University Guide, the and the new Daily Mail University Guide) that we also monitor and use for marketing purposes. The Guardian University Guide (GUG) saw Essex rise into the top 30 for the first time in this guide, a rise of 12 places on last year and a 55 place rise over the past three publications. This included Essex ranking 4th nationally in The Guardian’s value added metric – a metric that indicates the extent to which a student exceeded expectations, based on entry qualifications. In the Complete University Guide (CUG) Essex moved up seven places to 32nd in this year’s iteration. This included ranking 3rd nationally for facilities spend and 10th for academic services. We are also 30th for research intensity. In the very first iteration of the Daily Mail University Guide (DMUG) Essex entered at 41st.
• KPI-04 – Student Satisfaction. As noted above, due to the later publication of the NSS 2023 results the TGUG took the decision to not only not use the latest data and instead use NSS 2022 results, but also to maintain the same method as that used last year. Therefore, to understand our current performance, we created a proxy measure, that uses TGUG methodology, had they used the 2023 data. This proxy found an expected rank improvement of about +35 places, to 44th, on the actual result last year. Given the NSS 2024 results are expected to revert to a traditional July release date, we would expect NSS 2024 to be used next year.
• KPI-10a – Research Income/staff FTE. Whilst this has fallen slightly this year, this was primarily driven by consistent increases in staff FTE. Because we use published data – in order to obtain a rank – there is a lag in reporting this, and we can already see our more recent year of data (2022-23) and can see that substantial improvement is on its way in this KPI, including our highest ever Research Income figure (£35.7m). We cannot report a rank figure for this yet as the sector data will not be available until early 2024, but as a score, we anticipate a large increase.
• KPI-10c – HE-BCI Income. This year we recorded a substantially improved income figure, our second highest ever, showing an immediate bounce back from the disruption caused by the pandemic.
• KPI-02 – THE-WUR Rank. Essex remains ranked in the 301-350 bracket in this year’s THE-WUR publication, having ranked there in the last four publications. Although they do not publish our specific rank, we are able to self-calculate this to a strong degree of confidence and find we now rank 326th (having ranked 308th last year). Of UK institutions ranked in this table, Essex moved up 3 places to 36th. Within this table, Essex has now moved up to =15th in the world for ‘International Outlook’, which examines the proportion of international staff, students and international co-authorship on research publications. Essex also now ranks inside the top 300 for the THE-WUR’s newly titled ‘Research Quality’ (replacing ‘Citations’) having seen a 174 place rise this year.
• KPI-08 – Research Quality. Now using REF 2021 this score and rank will remain static for the next five publications of the TGUG. A conscious decision was made to provide a REF submission that optimised the QR funding potential of the submission, which is not always compatible with improved performance in the TGUG metric. This was successful with recurrent research grant increasing by £4.5m a year. Good progress is being made with early substantial preparations for the next REF that will take place in 2027-28.
• KPI-09 – Citation Rates. Essex has seen consistent year on year growth in the citations per publication value, however the rank continues to fall against the UK sector. Encouragingly the size of our growth exceeds the growth of the sector and a similar metric used in the THE-WUR saw an improved score. Within the pillar of metrics this and other citations-related metrics are held, Essex saw a huge 174 rank rise, to now rank inside the top 300 for the citations-related pillar (called Research Quality).
• KPI-06a – Student Outcomes (E&D) (Progression). This KPI measures the extent of progression gaps in five protected characteristics for progression from stage 1 to stage 2. A red flag equates to a 10% progression gap between groups in within a protected characteristic e.g., Male and Female. Last year we saw an increase in gaps classified red, but this year this proportion has fallen, more importantly, this fall in gaps has fallen all the way down to no gaps at all (classified as green), with that proportion (47% of all flags) being our highest proportion of green flags (‘no gap’ flags) of the strategic plan period.

Work in progress

• KPI-03 – TEF. Essex has been awarded Silver in this year’s TEF, having been awarded TEF Gold in the previous iteration in 2017. New TEF datasets are released each year in the run up to the next cycle (expected TEF 2027, in 2026-27), and this latest data is scrutinised to ensure action plans are in place to improve performance across the metrics and splits of the data (subjects and characteristics) in preparation for the next TEF submission.
• KPI-05 – Graduate Outcomes. Having lost ground during the pandemic period, our performance on this metric improved in value – and is now the highest score we have achieved in the Graduate outcomes survey in the TGUG (this is the fourth iteration), however, this has not kept pace with the bounce back seen across the sector and thus saw our rank fall nine places. Robust plans are in place for Graduate prospects/outcomes to continue this upwards trajectory in score, hopefully seeing rank improvements subsequently.
• KPI-06b – Student Outcomes (E&D) Degree Classifications. This KPI measures the extent of attainment gaps in five protected characteristics for 2:1s and 1sts. A red flag equates to a 15% attainment gap between groups in within a protected characteristic e.g., Male and Female. This is an area which requires work as the proportion of red flags has risen year on year. The proportion of amber flags (small, but present gaps) has also grown, where it is the ’no gaps’ category that shrunk. Gaps seen previously in students from more deprived areas (IMD Q1+2) have lessened (eight gaps down to six), whereas gaps in ethnicity and age groups have increased this year (an additional three each).
• KPI-07b – Research Degree/Staff FTE. This year saw a small fall in value, with a large fall in rank (scores on this KPI are very closely packed). This decrease in KPI-07b is driven by an increase in staff numbers once again this year, coinciding with a small decrease in the number of awards awarded this year.

2022-23 Financial Statements

Income 2022-23

Expenditure 2022-23

Student and staff numbers

Liquidity days

Cash inflows and outflows

Capital investment

Quick Overview 2022-23

• £334m
  Income up 17.6% (£284M 2021-22)
• £197m
  Teaching income up 11.9% (£176M 2021-22)
• £53.8m
  Research income (Including contracts, grants and fees)
• £19.1m
  Cash surplus for investment and growth** (£13.5m 2021-22)
• £312m
  Total expenditure (£326m* 2021-22) *includes £47m for USS
• 2,897
  Staffing (2,715 2021-22)
• 16,682
  Student numbers (Excludes CPD, Short Courses, SENSS, Partnerships, Centre for Education, Organisational Development)
• £23m
  Capital investment (£14.3m 2021-22)

**Cash surplus is measured as the surplus for the year plus non-cash transactions (depreciation and movements in investment property valuations, fixed asset investments and provisions) less capital grants and loan principal repayments.

Public Benefit Statement

Our charitable aims

Our Royal Charter sets out the objectives which form our charitable purpose “to advance education, scholarship, knowledge and understanding by teaching and research for the benefit of individuals and society at large”.

Our 2019-2025 strategy states that:

• Our purpose is to benefit individuals and communities through excellence in education and research.
• We will put student success at the heart of our mission, supporting students from every background to achieve outstanding outcomes; preparing our students to thrive in their future lives and nurturing our community of educators to support and promote student success.
• Our research will continue to focus on asking difficult questions, challenging conventional wisdom, tackling with rigour the questions that matter for people and communities and putting ideas into action to improve people’s lives.
• We will be recognised nationally and globally for the quality and impact of a transformative education, and for the international excellence and world-leading quality, scale and impact of our research.
• We will nurture and celebrate our shared commitment to social action, supporting every person in our University community to realise the potential of their Essex Spirit through their contribution to our shared mission.
• We will have grown the University to achieve transformational research through our community of researchers and extend our knowledge base by investing in new disciplines that meet the needs of our time and to ensure the financial sustainability of the University.

Beneficiaries of our work

Our research and education contribute to improving people’s lives in the UK and internationally.

Our students are the main public beneficiaries of our work in education and research. We provide a transformational educational experience, encompassing both the academic and extra-curricular activities, to fulfil the potential of our students. Our global community of over 125,000 alumni from 150 countries are taking their Essex Spirit out into the world and making change.

Other beneficiaries include companies, organisations and charities that employ our graduates, work with our academics on knowledge exchange projects, or access our training programmes.

Wider society benefits from the insights provided by our world-leading research in the social sciences, science and health, and the arts and humanities. Our work also makes a growing contribution to the local economy, underpinning the success of our region.

Governance

Members of Council are trustees of the University and our decision making pays due regard to the definition of public benefit outlined in the Charities Act 2011 and the Charity Commission’s guidelines on charitable purpose and public benefit, in particular, The Advancement of Education for the Public Benefit (Charity Commission, December 2008) and Public Benefit and Fee Charging (Charity Commission, December 2008).

Awards and rankings

Our excellence in research and education was recognised in 2022-23 by awards and rankings in key national and international assessments.

In 2023 we were ranked 56th in the global Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings. Out of 1,591 institutions across the world for our work in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

We continue to be the number one university in the UK for the number of active Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) with businesses, the flagship Innovate UK programme which links university research with companies to develop new services and products.

The impact of this work was underlined with Dr Faiyaz Doctor named the national KTP Academic of the Year at the prestigious Innovate UK Awards ceremony. Professor Berthold Lausen was also shortlisted in the KTP Academic of the Year category and Essex’s KTP team was nominated for the Best Knowledge Base KTP Support Team Award.

In the National Student Survey 2023, Essex was ranked in the top 30 for overall positive student feedback and the Students’ Union was ranked 16th for its effectiveness in representing students.

Essex was also ranked 32nd in the Complete University Guide 2024.

The 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) confirmed Essex as a powerhouse for social sciences research. Essex is ranked us in the top 10 in the UK for research quality in economics and econometrics, modern languages and linguistics, politics and international studies, and sociology.

We were also ranked in the top 10 for research impact in computer science, economics and econometrics, law, politics and international studies, and sociology.

Essex in Europe

The University of Essex continues to be part of the Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) Alliance, after it secured a European Commission grant worth €14.4m enabling it to continue its important work over the next four years.

YUFE enriches and enhances learning opportunities (including extra-curricular training activities) for our students across a network of ten European universities. Essex continued to has led the Alliance’s important diversity and inclusivity work which is embedded across all its activities. In 2023, this work was showcased internationally at the annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference in Washington DC.

YUFE’s ambitious Inno4YUFE project aiming to foster a new generation of student entrepreneurs and innovators brought students from across Europe together for its Accelerator programme in 2023. PhD Data Science graduate Dr Madalina-Daniela Mihailescu travelled to the University of Antwerp to meet fellow student entrepreneurs and discuss her business Hivemind Academy.

Essex is also part of YERUN - Young European Research Universities Network - which brings together 22 like-minded young universities from across Europe, with the aim to strengthen and develop cooperation in research, academic education and service which benefits society. Recent projects have included the development of a new online toolbox as part of a partnership between Essex and YERUN partners to promote international education and cooperation by helping doctoral candidates complete PhDs across multiple universities based in different countries.

Education at Essex

In 2022-23, 19,090 students studied undergraduate and postgraduate degrees with us.

We believe that learning extends beyond student’s degree programme. So we offer a number of additional learning opportunities to complement our courses. Languages for All, gives students access to language course, as part of their undergraduate degree at no extra cost, Data for All, is designed to give all students, regardless of their previous experience or the subject they are interested in valuable data skills. The success of these schemes means that in 2023-24, we will launch Democracy and Citizenship For All, Health and Wellbeing For All and Sustainability For All as part of our Essex For All programme.

We also believe Essex research should add value to the student experience which is why our research mindset is at the heart of our education offer. Through our Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme students can contribute to real-life research in their departments.

We offer work placements, internships and study abroad opportunities to help broaden our students’ horizons and help them gain valuable experience and skills. This includes our Frontrunner scheme which gives students part-time, internship opportunities, designed specifically for students with very little or no work experience

Our career development initiatives include our career mentoring programme, online careers events and 1-1 support, as well as an internships programme which offers opportunities for developing skills and experience, while providing businesses with the chance to benefit from students’ knowledge, skills and expertise.

Our Click crowdfunding platform supports students wanting to raise money to get their ideas off the ground. Since 2015, 415 projects, involving 1,690 students, have been supported by nearly £550,000 thanks to the generosity of over 7,000 donors (including match-funding from alumni and friends of the University).

We believe our graduates benefit society, and the companies and organisations they work for thanks to their research mindset, critical thinking, creativity, intellectual independence, excellent communication skills and leadership ability.

To ensure our students get the most innovative teaching, we encourage ongoing staff development and celebrate success through annual Excellence in Teaching Awards. Academics also have the opportunity to gain professional recognition as Fellows of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) through our CADENZA programme.

Encouraging students to make a difference

An Essex education encourages students to become active citizens making a difference in their communities. In our courses and in the wider educational opportunities we offer we nurture this.

Projects include:

• Our final-year sports therapy students spend 50 of their 200 placement hours in our purpose-built Sports Therapy Clinic on the Colchester Campus assessing, treating and prescribing rehabilitation programmes to real clients, supervised by physiotherapists and sports therapists.
• Democracy in Action is an award-winning module on community organizing, offered to students in their final year at university. The product of an exciting collaboration between the University of Essex and Citizens UK, Democracy in Action helps students develop the skills to advocate, organise and take action to support different groups in the community.
• In the School of Health and Social Care 400 students a year are encouraged to create links with third sector and user-led organisations to support access to health services through a module on advocacy.

New teaching facilities

We are investing in reshaping our teaching and learning facilities to ensure they are world class and provide our students with the very best learning environment:

• We have expanded teaching space for our health and social care provision, including a replica nursing suite, areas for occupational therapy and speech and language therapy teaching, and consultation training spaces for clinical psychology and social work students. In Southend, we have a new, larger clinical skills area with additional teaching and consultation spaces for nursing and social work students and have an increased dental skills simulation suite for the training of our oral health students.
• Students from our School of Sport, Rehabilitation, and Exercise Sciences will this year have access to a new professional standard performance analysis suite in the Essex Sports Arena and a cutting-edge refurbished lab – complete with a treadmill with inbuilt motion capture cameras – at our Human Performance Unit.
• Two labs in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering have undergone substantial refurbishments. One lab has been significantly increased to accommodate up to 98 workstations and is accessible round the clock to students. Another lab has expanded to accommodate 70 students and is fully equipped with an array of electronic bench apparatus, including digital voltmeters and oscilloscopes, all of which are crucial for hands-on electronic engineering studies.

Supporting the next generation of researchers

Essex is a leader in doctoral training and developing the next generation of researchers. We are part of several doctoral training partnerships offering training and funding:

• The Advanced Research and Innovation in the Environmental Sciences programme, including EnvEast, programme equips postgraduate research students with the skills to become leaders in the science and sustainable business of the natural environment.
• The Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts Southeast England offers PhD studentships and research-led training across the arts, humanities and creative practices.
• The South East Network for Social Sciences offers studentships and advanced research training in a range of disciplines in the social sciences.

Through these initiatives we work with other leading higher education institutions to promote excellence in research, postgraduate research training and knowledge exchange.

We are also a member of the Eastern Academic Research Consortium which provides opportunities for collaborative research and studentships in quantitative social science, digital humanities and synthetic biology.

Meeting different study needs

We offer various routes to an Essex degree to meet the needs of different students.

We have an expanding programme of Higher and Degree apprenticeships, covering Computer Science and Electronic Engineering; Health and Social Care, and Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences.

Apprenticeships offer an alternative route into higher education and we are increasing places offered through Essex.

For those who want to study remotely, we offer undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, in collaboration with Kaplan Open Learning, through University of Essex Online. Students can study for an Essex degree via our partners, including the University of Essex Online, Kaplan Singapore, and Brickfields Asia College in Malaysia.

Making a difference through volunteering

Our students are central to the positive effect we have on our local communities. We are proud of our students’ achievements in volunteering and social action.

The incredible work of students volunteering through the vTeam - the Students’ Union’s volunteering programme – led to recognition through the National Societies and Volunteering Awards (NSVAs).

Alfie Benson, a second year Maths student, scooped the Extra Mile Award at the National Societies and Volunteering Awards (NSVAs) and the Students’ Union’s Wellbeing Ambassadors claimed the national Wellbeing Award.

Alfie was crowned the winner in his category for dedicating time to the Numbers Project, which supports learning in schools and aims to get more people engaged with Maths.

The Wellbeing Ambassadors were recognised for their work in hosting a range of events and sessions to promote student wellbeing and mental health.

A total of 13 Essex students or societies were shortlisted in this year’s NSVAs – the most for any university, showing the strength of volunteering at Essex.

Another Essex student Anne Bernard, who works as an Animal Protection and Green Thumbs volunteer, was awarded a prestigious Coronation Champion Award in April, further showing the impact of volunteering.

Every year the Students’ Union VTeam helps students deliver thousands of hours of volunteering across a whole range of projects, from teaching local schoolchildren to supporting conservation projects and helping tidy up community areas. This year Essex students contributed a record 42,700 hours of volunteering to their communities.

These activities not only benefit the community but also the students themselves, as they develop skills that boost their future employability.

An inclusive community where everyone can succeed

We admit students on the basis of their merits, abilities and potential, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, disability, age or other irrelevant distinction, and our living and learning environment provides opportunities for everyone.

We ensure all students have equal opportunity to succeed both during their time at university and after they graduate. That’s why we provide employability opportunities for everyone and support for under-represented groups in getting the experience they need to secure graduate level jobs.

The importance of an Essex education is underlined by the fact 92.6% of our UK students come from (non-selective) state schools, against a sector average of 86%; and 44% of our home undergraduates are from the most disadvantaged quintiles. From 2016 to 2021, the number of students from the lowest participation quintile progressing to the University increased by 33.5%

We are also a University of Sanctuary committed to promoting a culture of welcome, safety and inclusion across our campuses and their wider communities. Among the many activities we undertake to support this work our Sanctuary Scholarships support students who are refugees or seeking asylum to study for Postgraduate Taught Masters.

We have also signed the Gypsy, Traveller, Roma, Showman and Boater (GTRSB) Higher Education Pledge to help us raise awareness of the history and culture of the GTRSB community and support GTRSB students in the community as well as GTRSB students on our campuses.

Our Transitions and Transformations: Black Researchers Journey project supported by funding from Research England continues to seek to tackle persistent inequalities that create barriers for Black, Asian and minority ethnic students to access and take part in postgraduate research.

Research at Essex

Beneficiaries of our research

• Students benefit from our research-led teaching.
• Government bodies, non-governmental organisations and regional, national and international businesses benefit from our knowledge exchange and partnership opportunities.
• Individuals and wider society benefit from our research which engages with current issues to improve the quality of people’s lives and inform debates and policy development
  and implementation.

In 2022-23 our research income reached an all-time high of £30m, illustrating our success in attracting research grants at a UK and international level.

Our research strengths were highlighted in spring 2022 when the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 results were published. This consolidated our reputation as a powerhouse for social sciences. We were ranked in the top 10 in the UK for economics and econometrics, modern languages and linguistics,

politics and international studies, and sociology for research quality (Grade Point Average, REF 2021). Additionally, we were ranked in the top 20 for art history, law and philosophy (Grade Point Average, Research Excellence Framework 2021). We were also ranked in the top 10 in the UK for research quality for computer science, economics and econometrics, law, politics and international studies, and sociology (Times Higher Education 2022).

Other standout results from REF 2021 were:

• 83% of our research output is world-leading or internationally excellent and three subjects were in the top ten in the UK for research output.
• 100% of our research impact is world-leading or internationally excellent for ten subjects and four subjects were in the top ten for research impact.
• 100% of our research environment is world-leading or internationally excellent in seven subjects.

Communicating our research excellence

A display by University of Essex scientists was at the heart of the Royal Society’s Summer of Science exhibition in London visited by thousands in July 2023. Visitors found out more about the therapeutic power of drumming in the interactive display developed by Dr Ruth Lowry from the School of Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences with rock legend and Blondie drummer Clem Burke. The collaboration also involved the University of Chichester, Hartpury University, King’s College London and instrument manufacturer Roland Corporation.

In Colchester our postgraduate community organised the Pint of Science Festival across four venues with scientists giving talks in pubs and bars to give the public insights into science research.

Our Professorial Inaugural Lectures have been also been relaunched post-COVID and are regular public lectures on the Colchester Campus which give the public the chance to hear about the work of newly appointed professors.

We also have a number of strands to engage the public in our research through online content. We are a partner of online news site The Conversation, which publishes news and views written by researchers. As of July 2023, Essex academics have contributed almost 765 articles, read more than 25.4m times globally.

Our Louder Than Words Podcast series encourages discussions, offers a platform to people making a difference – including our researchers – and aims to explain how you can take action on issues you care about. Episodes are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Our Brighter Futures online film series gives our researchers the opportunity to discuss how their research is improving policies.

Our researchers engage with print, broadcast and online media to inform public debates about everything from air pollution to international relations.

Our academics share their work through publication in internationally-recognised journals and via our University of Essex Research Repository.

Our global research agenda

Essex’s research agenda looks to tackle local, national and international challenges.

In 2022, a new partnership was launched with charity LEPRA to help people affected by leprosy and other vulnerable groups throughout the world. Essex’s Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing, our Human Rights Centre, together with the World Health Organisation, are now working with LEPRA on a number of research collaborations. This includes three funded postgraduate researchers starting in October 2023 looking at practical actions to tackle the disease and its consequences.

In December 2022, a unique new £500,000 partnership was launched to use Essex’s expertise in data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to help East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) to tackle complex public service challenges, promote evidence-based service provision and preventative solutions to key challenges, and improve the delivery of targeted services to the community.

We have a global reputation in human rights, social scientific research and data analytics. Our flagship institutes allow academics to work together across disciplines and deliver research which offers practical insights and impact.

Our world-renowned Human Rights Centre, Institute for Analytics and Data Science and Institute for Social and Economic Research engage with national and international partners from NGOs and national governments to the European Union and United Nations.

We’re continuing to extend the scope and impact of our work with the launch of the Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing in 2022 and a new Centre for Coastal Communities – which is part of a £20m town centre improvement project being backed by the Government’s Levelling Up Fund in Tendring District.

In 2013 Her Majesty the Queen conferred a Regius Professorship of Political Science on Essex, recognising 50 years of excellence in research and education in political science.

Each year we recognise the positive impact our researchers make on people’s everyday lives at our Celebrating Excellence in Research and Impact Awards. This year we made more than 20 awards across our three faculties.

Our research environment

We are committed to the highest ethical and professional standards and have clear procedures and governance to ensure the integrity of our research.

We’ve developed a Researcher Development Framework which helps ensure our researchers can gain all the skills and training they need, and access all the resources available to help them maximise the potential of their work.

Research highlights

• Tough new laws aimed at clamping down on misogynistic and sexist abuse on social media were put forward as an amendment to the Online Safety Bill passing through Parliament thanks to the support of an Essex legal expert.
• The Essex Armed Conflict and Crisis Hub launched a £1.5million project which will see new laws drawn up to better regulate and reduce the impact of war on civilians.
• Researchers from the Department of Government received €2.47million to explore the benefits of peacekeeping, post-conflict reconstruction and successful state building in war-torn countries.
• Distressed Ukrainians struggling with the day-to-day impact of the war are being given vital access to psychological support and guidance thanks to the training being given to teachers and other professionals by psychoanalyst, Professor Renos Papadopoulos.
• A multi-disciplinary team of academics working with Colchester Borough Council on coastal defences were invited to COP27 in Egypt to host a session on natural resources.
• Essex Business School was commissioned by Essex County Council to launch a survey to address women’s concerns about going out in the county at night.
• Essex sports scientists joined with the prestigious Royal Ballet School to unlock further advances in performance science and train the dance stars of the future.
• Dr Elia Valentini from the Department of Psychology discovered everyone’s brain has a ‘pain fingerprint’ that varies from person to person.
• Professor Reinhard Pekrun, from the Department of Psychology, found using anxiety and anger can spark more success than fun and relaxation – but at the cost of your health.
• Cutting-edge gene research by Dr Henry Chung revealed some of us are born to run – identifying 19 key gene variants linked to endurance performance.
• Essex academic Dr Shoaib Ehsan is part of a new £31m consortium looking to help the UK become a world powerhouse for the development of responsible artificial intelligence (AI).
• People with motor disabilities operated a wheelchair just with their thoughts, as part of an international research project involving Essex, which was an important step forward for brain-machine interfaces - computer systems that turn mind activity into action.
• Marine biologists from the School of Life Sciences were part of an expedition which made a ground-breaking discovery of extensive, ancient deep-sea coral reefs within the Galápagos Marine Reserve - the first of its kind to be documented inside the area since the reserve was established in 1998.
• Professor Sean Kelly’s book on the American slave trade is the first to fully explore the history of US ships that traded out of New England, enslaving 305,000 Africans.
• Research led by Professor Wayne Martin found that care home residents are being denied access to hospital treatment because of the incorrect use of Do Not Attempt CPR recommendations.

Community engagement

Schools' outreach

We have a number of specific outreach activities that enable young people to learn from our expertise and engage in important debates. Our flagship scheme, the Dora Love Prize, teaches young people that they have the power to stand up to hatred, discrimination and intolerance by asking them to explore how the Holocaust relates to the world around them today. The scheme has been described as a “beacon of hope” by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. This is the 11th year of the Prize and this was a record year for entries with 30 schools from across Essex and Suffolk taking part in the induction day and 19 taking part in the prize evening including (through a video submission) Collingwood School in West Vancouver, Canada.

Our broad outreach programme welcomes schoolchildren to our campuses to explore higher education and collaborate with us, attend lectures about our research and enjoy our full and varied arts programme.

We are committed to ensuring all students with the potential to succeed, no matter what their background, have the opportunity to understand more about Essex and the benefits of a university education. Our Access and Participation Plan sets out that commitment.

We are the lead institution for Make Happen – part of the Office for Students’ UniConnect programme – which last year won a national award for boosting opportunities for young people.

Through our University outreach activity, we engaged with over 8,000 students from over 50 schools and colleges. Make Happen engaged with over 9,300 students across 380 different activities, supporting them to make informed decisions about their future.

Making our expertise accessible

Many of our facilities, including the Albert Sloman Library, are open to the public. There are opportunities through initiatives such as the BabyLab for members of the public to take part in our research and we have a number of health services and clinics that serve our wider community.

An annual programme of departmental and institutional public events, such as debates, lectures and film screenings allow the public to engage in research debates.

Specific events include our Festival of Social Science programme, which in 2022 was based around a film festival hosted by art gallery firstsite and included films about our research from health and wellbeing to crime, equality, education, and identity.

Our School of Law and Human Rights Centre run several initiatives that support local communities, including the Human Rights Local project which shows how human rights are closely linked to everyday life by working with local and community groups, local authorities and other stakeholders, and the Essex Law Clinic which offers free legal services to the local community, and also educates people about their legal rights and obligations.

In April 2023, Ben O’Connell, Student Director at Essex Law Clinic, scooped the top prize in the Best Contribution by an Individual Student category at the Law Works Student Pro Bono Awards 2023. Ben, who graduated in summer 2023, worked with Colchester charity Beacon House, to help overturn 18 incorrect homeless assistance application decisions.

Working with business

We are committed to stimulating economic growth and nurturing cultural and social development. We aim to share our world-class research through commercial applications that make the world a better place.

In September 2022, the latest Knowledge Excellence Framework, the UK Government’s review of Universities and their Knowledge Exchange activities, ranked Essex 3rd in our comparator group and 12th overall in the UK for our performance across a range of areas. Essex featured in the top 20% for work with the public and third sector and for commercialisation. Essex was in the top 40% for work on local growth and regeneration, public and community engagement, working with businesses, and graduate start-ups.

We continue to extend our regional role in promoting growth as a founding partner of Freeport East, which is leading ambitious plans for developments in Harwich and Felixstowe including new clean energy and off-shore wind capacity. Freeport East received final Government approvals in January 2023. The development of the Freeport, which is expected to create up to 13,500 new jobs, will be boosted by £25m in Government funding to support infrastructure enhancement.

Knowledge Gateway

Angels@Essex. the University’s innovative investment arm based on the Knowledge Gateway research and technology park, continued to gain momentum. Angels@Essex is part of a coalition of partners including Creative UK, Screen South and Wired Sussex which launched the Create South East Investment Readiness Programme in 2023 to provide support for high-growth potential businesses in the creative industries over the next three years.

This builds on the success of Angels@Essex since launching in May 2020 as part of the University Enterprise Zone project, supported by Research England. More than 40 businesses have shared over £19m and a further £9.5m has been raised in an additional 15 funding rounds by businesses that have received Angels@Essex mentoring support.

Essex has had a long-term ambition to become a national centre of excellence for businesses in high-value, knowledge-based sectors linked to the University’s research expertise.

We have invested over £80m in the 43-acre Knowledge Gateway, which includes Parkside Office Village and the Innovation Centre – which together provide 71,000 square feet of office space - as well as Essex Business School.

Work is being completed on the next phase of Parkside – providing a further 41,571 square feet of offices which will be ready for occupation in 2024. The £10.7m building will provide commercial office space alongside a new home for the Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing and a new hub for health and wellbeing services linked to the University’s research and education.

Existing space on Parkside Office Village continues to attract businesses with new companies moving on including Industrial Robotics Systems, PCB Design School, GP Primary Choice and growing fitness and technology business Quoox.

Parkside is also home to our academic centres, the Institute of Analytics and Data Science and the ESRC Business Local Government Data Research Centre and the Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing.

The £12m Innovation Centre managed by leading operator Oxford Innovation provides space, plus hands-on support, to up to 50 start-ups and businesses looking to grow.

Together these vibrant spaces provide high-quality accommodation, meeting and conference rooms, communal areas for business networking, and vital hands-on support to help start-up companies, and those ready to scale up their business, to succeed.

Knowledge Transfer Partnership success

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), funded by Innovate UK and reporting to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, bring together businesses and universities to develop new products, services or technologies, driven by research.

Essex is currently the number one university in the UK for active Innovate UK funded KTPs, with 44 KTP projects. In addition to the 44 active KTPs, to date the team has successfully completed 55 KTPs to the value of over £10m. Our KTPs cover many industrial sectors, including:

• Technology
• Telecommunications
• Logistics
• Finance
• Legal Services
• Defence
• Agriculture
• Manufacturing

The Business Engagement team is developing partnerships to deliver innovation in areas where companies might face challenges to innovate in the development of products and services. The new Innovate to Elevate: Babergh & Mid Suffolk programme is allowing businesses to apply to take part in fully funded collaborative projects with Essex researchers.

Student employability and entrepreneurship

We continue to innovate from providing Edge Hotel School students with the opportunity to learn in a fully-operational four-star hotel through to embedding entrepreneurship in a growing number of departments.

We are recognised as a leading university for promoting entrepreneurship and helping students turn their business dreams into reality led to Essex Startups at the University of Essex being shortlisted in the National Enterprise Educator Awards in July 2023.

Essex Startups is one of just three finalists in the Entrepreneurship Catalyst category – which recognises individuals or teams from universities and further education colleges who are delivering an exceptional entrepreneurship education.

The Essex Startups team supports students and graduates who are interested in starting their own business and want to discuss, develop, test and launch their ideas. Support includes one-to-one advice sessions, business bootcamps, workshops and webinars, and access to funding opportunities.

They held their first Student Start-up Showcase this year to bring together and celebrate successful student and graduate entrepreneurs. Winner of the Most Sustainable Start-up and the People’s Choice Award categories was Temini Ayo-Kasumu, founder of Eiia, which is developing sustainable alternatives supporting feminine care.

Essex Startups is just one part of a comprehensive range of careers support throughout the year including one-to-one workshops, mentoring and skills sessions.

Sporting success

Essex Rebels and Essex Blades

Involvement in high-quality sport supports the educational experience of our students. In 2022-23, Essex Blades sports teams scored the highest ever points total in the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) competition with two performance teams reaching the BUCS National Championships Final and 23 teams in the top three of their respective leagues.

In 2022-23, the Essex Rebels sporting family was extended to include both volleyball and basketball. The Essex Rebels, who play at the Essex Sport Arena on the Colchester Campus, now compete at an elite national league level in both sports. The Essex Rebels provides a pathway to students into competing at the highest level.

Essex’s sport offer has also been recognised with several national awards. Basketball England named Essex as one of the educational intuitions of the year for its impact with its franchise Essex Rebels and awarded the prestigious ‘Best Gameday Experience Award’ to Essex.

The 2023 CUBO Awards, which recognise innovation and excellence in commercial and campus services at universities, also awarded Essex the Innovation in Student Experience Award for its innovative approach to developing the student-led supporters club ‘The Tribe’.

The Essex Rebels has seen high engagement with both students and the public. The Essex Rebels Women’s Basketball team has the largest average number of spectators of any professional women’s basketball team in the UK and an International Women’s Day event in March 2023 broke the record for the largest attendance at a women’s basketball league game in the UK, with 1,500 spectators.

Developing sporting talent

Talented athletes joining the University of Essex’s Performance Programme have access to expert coaching, a wide range of world-class sporting facilities and specialist support designed to encourage and develop individual athletes and teams towards BUCS, national and international success.

We have partnerships with Basketball England, the FA, the LTA, the RFU and Volleyball England. We are also accredited through the Sport England Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS) initiative to support young athletes to gain qualifications while also developing their sporting talent with Essex receiving TASS Dual Career Accreditation.

In August 2022, Essex became the newest FA Women’s High Performance Football Centre. The initiative aims to improve the quality and quantity of coaches working in the women’s and girl’s game, especially those working in the FA Talent Pathway and Women’s National League. The centre is helping to provide a range of different work experience opportunities to allow Essex students and local coaches from the region to develop their skills and experience.

Art and Culture

Live theatre

We have a theatre on each of our three campuses at Colchester, Southend and Loughton offering professional and student-led productions which provide a vibrant drama scene for both our on-campus and local communities.

Essex Book Festival

We continue to be a valued supporter of Essex Book Festival. Professor Jules Pretty chaired events across Essex with authors looking at the impact of climate change, the decline of the English seaside and deprivation in coastal communities.

Professor Pretty was also part of the Hope Tales 3 event at Firstsite with Andrew Simms and Nicky Saunter, an afternoon of collaborative performance, readings, music and poetry to generate hope in times of crisis.

Author, poet and songwriter Professor Adrian May took members of the public on a stroll round Colchester Car Boot sale to celebrate the launch of his latest book, Boot Sale Harvest, and Dr James Canton talked about his latest book Grounded at Hylands House in Chelmsford.

The Lakeside Theatre hosted Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting talking to Professor Pam Cox about his book One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up.

Art and exhibitions on our campuses

The Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA) comprises 750 works, and provides teaching and research space for students, staff and the wider community. We display works from the collection across our Colchester Campus and the whole collection is accessible online.

Art Exchange, our Colchester Campus gallery, has a year-round programme of events and exhibitions attended by our campus community as well as members of the public. From April to June 2023, Art Exchange hosted an exhibition created by Essex MA Curating students titled Lucid Borders which explored the entangled relationship between migration and alienation.

The Albert Sloman Library is now hosting displays inspired by its special collections. Dispatches from the Culture War: homosexuality, blasphemy, and obscenity in British media was curated by Essex student Tilly Hawkins.

Corporate Governance Statement

Corporate Governance and Accountability Arrangements

The University is a higher education provider incorporated by Royal Charter. The University’s governing body, Council, is committed to achieving high standards of corporate governance in line with accepted best practice.

The University is compliant with the Committee of University Chairs’ (CUC) higher education Code of Governance issued in September 2020, and the higher education senior staff remuneration code, published by the CUC in June 2018. The University also adopted the CUC Higher Education Audit Committees Code of Practice (May 2020). The Remuneration Committee has an ongoing review process to ensure the University aligns with the CUC’s reporting guidelines.

The University has continued to enhance the effectiveness of its overall governance arrangements, building on the recommendations put forward by Advance HE, a sector-owned charity that specialises in higher education governance, when it undertook a University-commissioned external review of the University’s governance arrangements and Council effectiveness in academic year 2019-20. In that review, Advance HE concluded that “the standard of governance at Essex is very good with independent governors being committed and passionate, supported by an open culture” and “comfortably place[d] governance at Essex in the top quartile of the sector”.

During 2022-23, the University implemented the recommendations that emerged for a subsequent review of the size and shape of Council, which culminated in the overall size of Council reducing from 25 to 19 members, whilst broadly retaining the overall ratio of internal to external members. This will ensure that Council can operate as efficiently and effectively as possible for many years to come.

A review of Senate effectiveness was also undertaken during 2022-23, to ensure that the University’s supreme academic authority is operating effectively. Implementation of the Senate approved action plan will continue in 2023-24.

Council continues to monitor the progress made by the Students’ Union in implementing the action plan that arose from its 2020-21 governance review.

The University Council

Members of Council are the trustees of the University, which is an exempt charity. The University’s Council comprises ex officio external members, external members, a student member, ex officio appointed employees, employees elected by Senate and an employee elected by professional services staff. Of its members, a majority are members drawn from outside the University.

The roles of Chancellor and Pro-Chancellor (including the Chair of Council) are separated from the role of the University’s Chief Executive, the Vice-Chancellor. The University Treasurer performs the role of Senior Independent Director.

The Council of the University has adopted a Statement of Primary Responsibilities, which is published on the University website. The statement sets out the Council’s responsibilities in respect of powers of appointment and employment, financial and legal powers, planning, monitoring, control, and student welfare.

The Council held four ordinary meetings during the year, and one full away day. A series of additional training, development and engagement opportunities were offered between meetings, as were regular briefings and updates on key issues. The now well-established annual meeting of the Senate and the Council was held in July, to which members of the Students’ Union Trustee Board were also invited.

Responsibilities of the Council

Council is responsible for preparing the Strategic Report, the Public Benefit Statement, the Corporate Governance Statement and Statement of Internal Control, and the financial statements in accordance with the requirements of the Office for Students’ Terms and Conditions of Funding for Higher Education Institutions and Research England’s Terms and Conditions of Research England Grant and applicable law
and regulations.

Council is required to prepare the Group and parent University financial statements in accordance with UK accounting standards and applicable law (UK Generally Accepted Accounting Practice), including FRS 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland. The terms and conditions of funding further require the financial statements to be prepared in accordance with the 2019 Statement of Recommended Practice – Accounting for Further and Higher Education, in accordance with the requirements of the Accounts Direction issued by the Office for Students.

Council is required to prepare financial statements which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Group and parent University and of their income and expenditure, gains and losses and changes in reserves for that period. In preparing each of the group and parent University financial statements, Council is required to:

• select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;
• make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
• state whether applicable UK accounting standards have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements;
• assess the group and parent University’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern; and
• use the going concern basis of accounting, unless it either intends to liquidate the group or the parent University, to cease operations, or has no realistic alternative but to do so.

Council is responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the University’s transactions and disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the University. It is responsible for such internal controls as it determines is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements, ensuring that they are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error. Council has a general responsibility for taking such steps as are reasonably open to it to safeguard the assets of the group and to prevent and detect fraud and other irregularities.

Council is also responsible for ensuring that:

• funds from whatever source administered by the Group or the University for specific purposes have been properly applied to those purposes and managed in accordance with relevant legislation;
• funds provided by the Office for Students and Research England have been applied in accordance with the terms and conditions attached to them;
• ensuring that there are appropriate financial and management controls in place to safeguard public funds and funds from other sources; and
• securing the economical, efficient and effective management of the university’s resources and expenditure.

Council is responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the University’s website. Legislation in the UK governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

Statement of Internal Control

The key elements of the University’s system of internal control, which is designed to discharge the responsibilities set out above, include the following:

• clear definitions of the responsibilities of, and authority delegated to, heads of academic departments and administrative sections;
• a short and medium term planning process, supplemented by detailed annual income, expenditure and capital budgets;
• regular reviews of academic performance and financial results involving variance reporting and updates of financial outturns;
• defined and formalised requirements for the approval and control of expenditure, with investment decisions involving capital or revenue expenditure being subject to formal detailed appraisal and review according to appropriate levels set by Council;
• Financial Regulations, including financial controls and procedures, approved by Council on the recommendation of the Audit and Risk Management Committee;
• a professional Internal Audit team whose annual risk-based programme is approved by the Audit and Risk Management Committee. The Head of Internal Audit expressed the following opinion for the year ending 31 July 2023: “The University’s arrangements for risk management control and governance, and economy, efficiency and effectiveness are adequate and effective. This does not mean that all aspects are adequate and effective, but there are no indications of a material weakness in them. A material weakness is defined as one that could lead to a significant impact on the business, operations or standing of the University.”
• regular reports on internal control, compliance and risk received and reviewed by the Audit and Risk Management Committee which in turn are reported to Council which cover all controls (financial, business and operational);
• risk identification and management arrangements which include a Strategic Risk Register which contains weightings (of likelihood and impact) linked to the Strategic Plan which also informs the Internal Audit planning process.

Any system of internal control or risk management is designed to manage rather than eliminate the risk of failure to achieve business objectives and can only provide reasonable, but not absolute, assurance against material misstatement or loss.

The Committees of Council

The Council delegates some business to a number of committees:

• Audit and Risk Management;
• Policy and Resources;
• Nominations;
• People Supporting Strategy; and
• Remuneration.

All of these committees are formally constituted with published terms of reference. The disclosures in relation to these committees follow those in respect of Council itself.

The Audit and Risk Management Committee has no executive responsibility and comprises solely external members, at least two of whom (excluding the Chair) are external members of Council, and at least one of whom has recent and relevant experience in finance, accounting or auditing.

Audit and Risk Management Committee relies on the work of internal and external audit, on information provided by management and on management responses to the questions it raises. The identification and management of risk is an ongoing process specifically linked to the objectives in the University Strategy and is monitored closely by Audit and Risk Management Committee. Audit and Risk Management Committee reports on the results of risk identification, evaluation, and management to Council, which also receives the Strategic Risk Register for regular review. The Committee met four times in the year.

The responsibilities of the Audit and Risk Management Committee include:

• reporting to Council annually on the effectiveness of the internal control system and the pursuit of value for money, together with an opinion on risk management and data quality;
• advising on the appointment of the Internal Auditor and approval of the internal audit plan;
• receipt of both an annual report from Internal Audit, which includes an opinion on the degree of assurance of the University’s system of internal control, and a report on each assignment including recommendations; and
• advising the Council as necessary on the appointment of the External Auditors, to receive their reports and review their performance and effectiveness.

Internal Audit is responsible for providing an objective and independent appraisal of all the University’s activities. The Internal Audit work programme is risk-based and is updated to take account of changes in the University’s risk profile. Progress made on recommendations by the University is reported to the Audit and Risk Management Committee.

In respect of its development, strategic management and financial responsibilities, Council receives recommendations and advice from the Policy and Resources Committee. The Committee met five times during the year. Both Council and Policy and Resources Committee receive reports on business, operational and compliance matters from the University Steering Group.

The Nominations Committee makes recommendations for the appointment or re-appointment of members of Council, its committees, and Court, and oversees the mechanisms for the recruitment and selection of independent non-executive directors of the University’s subsidiary companies. The Committee met three times during the year.

The People Supporting Strategy Committee provides oversight of the University’s People Supporting Strategy and workforce plan, and makes recommendations to Council regarding strategic people policies, plans and strategic framework for reward and recognition. The Committee met twice during the year.

The Remuneration Committee determines the annual remuneration of the most senior staff, including the Vice-Chancellor. The Committee met twice during the year.

The University of Senate

The Senate is the highest academic authority of the University. It is responsible for the promotion of academic work in both teaching and research, for the regulation of educational arrangements and the maintenance of discipline. It receives quality audit reports from both external regulators and in-house departmental reviews.

The University Court

The University Court is a formal body established under the Charter and Statutes. Its main function is to receive a report from the Vice-Chancellor on the workings and sustainability of the University since the last meeting. The Annual Meeting took place at our Colchester Campus on Thursday 29 June 2023.

Council Members (Trustees)

The following table outlines membership of the University Council during 2022-23.

	Terms of appointment
	Term 1	Term 2	Term 3
External members (7)
Alexa Coates	27/11/17 - 31/7/20	1/8/20 - 31/7/23
Obum Ekeke	1/8/21 - 31/7/24
Simon Hall	1/8/16 - 31/7/19	1/8/19 - 31/7/22	1/8/22 - 31/7/25
Stephanie Hilborne	4/4/19 - 31/7/21	1/8/21 - 31/7/23
Pravina Ladva	1/8/20 - 31/7/23	1/8/23 - 31/12/23
Melanie Leech	4/4/19 - 31/7/21	1/8/21 - 31/7/24
Dr Adam Wright	1/8/16 - 31/7/19	1/8/19 - 31/7/22	1/8/22 - 31/7/25
Ex officio members (7)
Jane Hamilton, Pro-Chancellor/Chair Pro-Chancellor/Chair from: 1/8/19	1/8/15 - 31/7/18	1/8/18 - 31/7/21	1/8/21 - 31/7/24
Paul Jackson, Pro-Chancellor Pro-Chancellor from 1/8/20	1/1/17 - 31/7/19	1/8/19 - 31/7/22	1/8/22 - 31/7/25
Milan Makwana, Pro-Chancellor Pro-Chancellor from 19/2/19	1/8/14 - 31/7/17	1/8/17 - 31/7/20	1/8/20 - 31/7/23
Tim Porter, Treasurer Treasurer from 1/8/16	1/8/14 - 31/7/17	1/8/17 - 31/7/20	1/8/20 - 31/7/23
Professor Anthony Forster, Vice-Chancellor	N/A
Professor Lorna Fox O'Mahony, Deputy Vice-Chancellor	1/8/20 - 31/7/22	1/8/22 - 31/7/25
Nashwa Alsakka, President of the Students' Union	1/7/22 - 30/6/23
Kieran Phillips, President of the Students’ Union	1/7/23 - 30/6/24
Appointed members (2)1
Dr2 Annecy Lax, Dean of Partnerships (Education)	1/10/21 - 09/01/23
Professor Sanja Bahun, Dean of Postgraduate Research Education	1/10/18 - 31/7/21	1/8/21 - 31/12/22
Members elected by Senate (4)
Professor Shane Martin	1/8/20 - 31/7/23
Dr Stevphen Shukaitis	1/8/20 - 31/7/23
Vacancy
Vacancy
Member elected by the non-academic staff (1)
Vacancy

1 'The composition of Council changed in-year, with the number of members reducing from 25 to 19. Consequently, and following approval of a Special Resolution to revise the size and shape of Council on 9 January, the two appointed member positions on Council ceased.'

2 Dr from 4 May 2022

Independent Auditor's Report to the Council of the University of Essex

Opinion on the financial statements

In our opinion, the financial statements:

• Give a true and fair view of the state of the Group’s and of the University’s affairs as at 31 July 2023 and of the Group’s and the University’s income and expenditure, gains and losses, changes in reserves and of the Group’s and the University’s cash flows for the year then ended; and
• Have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice.

We have audited the financial statements of University of Essex (“the University”) and its subsidiaries (“the Group”) for the year ended 31 July 2023 which comprise the Consolidated and University statement of comprehensive income and expenditure, the Consolidated and University statement of changes in reserves, the Consolidated and University balance sheets, the Consolidated cash flow statement and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (“ISAs (UK)”) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Independence

We are independent of the Group and the University in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the Members of Council’s use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the Group and the University’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the Members of Council with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The Council is responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the Strategic report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the financial statements or a material misstatement of the other information. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinion on other matters required by the Office for Students (“OfS”) and UK Research and Innovation (including Research England) and the Education and Skills Funding Agency

In our opinion, in all material respects:

• Funds from whatever source administered by the University for specific purposes have been properly applied to those purposes and managed in accordance with relevant legislation.
• Funds provided by the OfS, UK Research and Innovation (including Research England), the Education and Skills Funding Agency and the Department for Education have been applied in accordance with the relevant terms and conditions.
• The requirements of the OfS’s Accounts Direction (OfS 2019.41) have been met.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the OfS requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

• The University’s grant and fee income, as disclosed in notes 1 and 2 to the accounts, has been materially misstated.
• The University’s expenditure on access and participation activities for the financial year, as has been disclosed in note 11 to the accounts, has been materially misstated.

Responsibilities of the Members of Council

As explained more fully in the Responsibilities of Council, the Members of Council are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the Members of Council determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the Members of Council are responsible for assessing the Group and the University’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the Members of Council either intends to liquidate the Group or the University or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Extent to which the audit was capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:

Non-compliance with laws and regulations

Based on:

• Our understanding of the Group, University and the sector in which it operates;
• Discussion with management and those charged with governance (including the Audit and Risk Management Committee and internal audit provision);
• Obtaining and understanding of the Group’s and University’s policies and procedures regarding compliance with laws and regulations; and
• Direct representation from the Accountable Officer.

We considered the significant laws and regulations to be The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102), the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011, Corporate and VAT legislation, Employment Taxes, and the Bribery Act 2010.

The Group is also subject to laws and regulations where the consequence of non-compliance could have a material effect on the amount or disclosures in the financial statements, for example through the imposition of fines or litigations. We identified such laws and regulations to be health and safety legislation and registration with the Office for Students and their ongoing conditions of registration.

Our procedures in respect of the above included:

• Review of minutes of meeting of those charged with governance for any instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations;
• Review of correspondence with regulatory and tax authorities for any instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations;
• Review of financial statement disclosures and agreeing to supporting documentation;
• Involvement of tax specialists in the audit; and
• Review of legal expenditure accounts to understand the nature of expenditure incurred.

Fraud

We assessed the susceptibility of the financial statements to material misstatement, including fraud. Our risk assessment procedures included:

• Enquiry with management and those charged with governance (including the Audit and Risk Management Committee and internal audit provision) regarding any known or suspected instances of fraud;
• Obtaining an understanding of the Group’s policies and procedures relating to:
  • Detecting and responding to the risks of fraud; and
  • Internal controls established to mitigate risks related
    to fraud.
• Review of minutes of meeting of those charged with governance for any known or suspected instances of fraud;
• Considered management’s incentives and opportunities for fraudulent manipulation of the financial statements;
• Discussion amongst the engagement team as to how and where fraud might occur in the financial statements; and
• Performing analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected relationships that may indicate risks of material misstatement due to fraud.

Based on our risk assessment, we considered the areas most susceptible to fraud to be revenue recognition, posting inappropriate journal entries to manipulate financial results and management bias in significant judgements and accounting estimates.

Our procedures in respect of the above included:

• Testing a sample of income transactions throughout the year, and around the year end to ensure that income recognition is in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP): Accounting for Further and Higher Education 2019, the Financial Reporting Standard (FRS 102) and stated accounting policies;
• Testing a sample of journal entries throughout the year, which met a defined risk criteria, by agreeing to supporting documentation;
• Identifying and testing journal entries, in particular any journal entries posted from staff members with privilege access rights, journals posted by key management, journals posted by individuals outside of their expected job roles, and others deemed unusual based on our expectations;
• Performing analytical procedures to identify unusual or unexpected relationships that may indicate risks of material misstatement due to fraud. Areas of identified risk are then tested substantively;
• Challenging assumptions made by management in their significant accounting estimates in particular in relation to the actuarial assumptions used in the valuation of defined benefit scheme liabilities;
• Reading minutes of meetings of those charged with governance, reviewing internal audit reports and reviewing correspondence with HMRC and relevant regulators to identify any actual or potential frauds or any potential weaknesses in internal control which could result in fraud susceptibility; and
• Direct enquiry of the Accountable Officer.

We also communicated relevant identified laws and regulations and potential fraud risks to all engagement team members and remained alert to any indications of fraud or non-compliance with laws and regulations throughout the audit.

Our audit procedures were designed to respond to risks of material misstatement in the financial statements, recognising that the risk of not detecting a material misstatement due to fraud is higher than the risk of not detecting one resulting from error, as fraud may involve deliberate concealment by, for example, forgery, misrepresentations or through collusion. There are inherent limitations in the audit procedures performed and the further removed non-compliance with laws and regulations is from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, the less likely we are to become aware of it.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the Members of Council as a body, in accordance with Section 75 of the Higher Education Research Act 2017 and the charters and statutes of the University. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the University’s Council those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the University and the Members of Council as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

James Aston MBE (Senior Statutory Auditor)

For and on behalf of BDO LLP, Statutory Auditor
Gatwick, UK

1st December 2023

BDO LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales (with registered number OC305127).

Accounting Policies

Statement of Compliance

These consolidated and Institution financial statements have been prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 (FRS 102) and the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP): Accounting for Further and Higher Education (2019 edition). They have also been prepared in accordance with the ‘carried forward’ powers and duties of previous legislation (Further and Higher Education Act 1992 and the Higher Education Act 2004) and the new powers of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 during the transition period to 31 July 2019, the Royal Charter, the Accounts Direction issued by the Office for Students (OfS), the Terms and Conditions of funding for higher education institutions issued by the Office for Students and the Terms and Conditions of Research England Grant.

Basis of preparation

The financial statements are prepared on the basis of going concern and in accordance with the historical cost convention (modified by the revaluation of certain categories of fixed assets). The Group and parent University is a public benefit entity and therefore has applied the relevant public benefit requirement of the applicable UK laws and accounting standards.

Going Concern

The Group and parent University’s activities, together with the factors likely to affect its future development, performance and position, are set out in the Strategic Report, which forms part of the Financial Statements. The Strategic Report also describes the financial position of the Institution, its cash flows, liquidity position and borrowing facilities.

The financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis, which Council consider to be appropriate for the following reasons.

The budget and financial forecasts for 2023-24 and future years have been prepared with the inclusion of significant contingency budgets to support financial risk areas, including any student recruitment below our planned minimum entry targets. In addition, we operate a series of future specified decision gates to ensure staff recruitment only commences when there is sufficient confidence around student number indications and new product development, all within the overall context of departmental and institutional affordability. These approaches strongly mitigate any financial and budget risk arising from student recruitment shortfalls against target.

Looking beyond AY 2023-24, the work underway on the Essex 2025 programme will embed and enhance a richer data-informed approach to the development and implementation of the University’s education portfolio and curricula, including new product development and refresh of existing provision in line with the strategic priorities set out in the University Strategy and Education Strategy. The programme supports our ambitions to grow to 20,000 students by 2025 by aligning the education portfolio with student needs, future market demands and driving curriculum innovation through new flexible product development.

For 2022-23 the pre-audit cash surplus (measured as the surplus for the year plus non-cash transactions (depreciation and movements in investment property valuations, fixed asset investments and provisions) less capital grants and loan principal repayments forecast, at £19.2m, equates to 5.8% of total income.

The Group and parent University had immediately available cash reserves of £40.4m as at 31 July 2023 and access to £40m through a revolving credit facility.

At 31 July 2023 the Group and parent University had long term debt of £140.6m with £80m expiring in 2043, £50m expiring in 2037 and £15m expiring in 2047.

Based on indicative student registrations, which presents a position where total fee income is expected to be close to budget, the risk of any breach of banking covenants during the review period (August 2023 to November 2024) is very minimal.

Consequently, the Council is confident that the Group and parent University will have sufficient funds to continue to meet their liabilities as they fall due for at least 12 months from the date of approval of the financial statements and therefore have prepared the financial statements on a going concern basis.

Basis of consolidation

The consolidated financial statements include the University and all its subsidiaries for the financial year to 31 July 2023. Intra-group transactions are eliminated on consolidation.

The consolidated financial statements do not include the income and expenditure of the Students' Union as the University does not exert control or dominant influence over policy decisions. Joint ventures are accounted for using the gross equity method.

Significant judgements and estimates

Preparation of the financial statements requires management to make significant judgements and estimates. Items in the financial statements where these judgements and estimates have been made include the treatment of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) as a multi-employer scheme. The SORP makes the distinction between a Group Plan and a multi-employer scheme. A Group Plan consists of a collection of entities under common control typically with a sponsoring employer. A multi-employer scheme is a scheme for entities not under common control and represents (typically) an industry-wide scheme such as that provided by USS. The accounting for a multi-employer scheme where the employer has entered into an agreement with the scheme that determines how the employer will fund a deficit results in the recognition of a liability for the contributions payable that arise from the agreement (to the extent that they relate to the deficit) and the resulting expense is recognised in the Statement of Comprehensive Income. The scheme provided by USS meets the definition of a multi-employer scheme and has therefore been recognised at the discounted fair value of contractual contributions under the funding plan in existence at the date of approving the financial statements.

Income recognition

Income from the sale of goods or services is credited to the Statement of Comprehensive Income when the goods or services are supplied to the external customers or the terms of the contract have been satisfied.

Fee income is stated gross of any expenditure which is not a discount and credited to the Statement of Comprehensive Income and over the period in which students are studying. Where the amount of the tuition fee is reduced, by a discount for prompt payment, income receivable is shown net of the discount. Bursaries and scholarships are accounted for gross as expenditure and not deducted from income.

Investment income is credited to the Statement of Comprehensive Income on a receivable basis.

Funds the University receives and disburses as paying agent on behalf of a funding body are excluded from the income and expenditure of the University where the University is exposed to minimal risk or enjoys minimal economic benefit related to the transaction.

Grant funding

Revenue government grants including funding council block and government research grants are recognised within the Statement of Comprehensive Income over the periods in which the University recognises the related costs for which the grant is intended to compensate. Where part of a Government grant is deferred it is recognised as deferred income within creditors and allocated between credits due within one year and due after more than one year as appropriate.

Capital grants from government or non-government sources are recognised within the Statement of Comprehensive Income when the University is entitled to the income and performance-related conditions have been met. Income received in advance of performance-related conditions being met is deferred on the Balance Sheet and released to the Statement of Comprehensive Income in line with such conditions being met.

Other grants and donations from non-government sources, including research grants from non-government sources, are recognised within the Statement of Comprehensive Income when the University is entitled to the income and performance-related conditions have been met. Income received in advance of performance-related conditions being met is deferred on the Balance Sheet and released to the Statement of Comprehensive Income in line with such conditions being met.

Donations and endowments

Non-exchange transactions without performance-related conditions are donations and endowments. Donations and endowments with donor-imposed restrictions are recognised within the Statement of Comprehensive Income when the University is entitled to the income. Income is retained within the restricted reserve until such time that it is utilised in line with such restrictions at which point the income is released to general reserves through a reserve transfer.

Investment income and appreciation of endowments is recorded in income in the year in which it arises and as either restricted or unrestricted income according to the terms of the restriction applied to the individual endowment fund.

Donations with no restrictions are recorded within the Statement of Comprehensive Income when the University is entitled to the income.

Donations and endowments with restrictions are classified as restricted reserves with additional disclosure provided within the notes to the accounts.

There are four main types of donations and endowments with restrictions:

• Restricted donations - the donor has specified that the donation must be used for a particular objective.
• Unrestricted permanent endowments - the donor has specified that the fund is to be permanently invested to generate an income stream for the general benefit of the University.
• Restricted expendable endowments - the donor has specified a particular objective other than the purchase or construction of tangible fixed assets, and the University can convert the donated sum into income.
• Restricted permanent endowments - the donor has specified that the fund is to be permanently invested to generate an income stream to be applied to a particular objective.

Accounting for retirement benefits

The University participates in three principal pension schemes for employees; these are the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and the Superannuation Arrangement for the University of London (SAUL). All three schemes are defined benefit schemes which are externally funded and are contracted out of the State Second Pension (S2P). Each fund is valued every three years by professionally qualified independent actuaries.

The USS and SAUL schemes are multi-employer schemes for which it is not possible to identify the assets and liabilities of the University, due to their mutual nature. Therefore, they are accounted for as defined contribution retirement benefit schemes.

A liability is recorded within provisions for any contractual commitment to fund past deficits within the USS and SAUL schemes.

Defined contribution plan

A defined contribution plan is a post-employment benefit plan under which the employer pays fixed contributions into a separate entity and will have no legal or constructive obligation to pay further amounts. Obligations for contributions to defined contribution pension plans are recognised as an expense in the income statement in the periods during which services are rendered by employees.

Defined benefit plan

A defined benefit plan is a post-employment benefit plan other than a defined contribution plan. The University’s obligation is to provide the agreed benefits to current and former employees, bearing actuarial risk (that benefits will cost more than expected) and investment risk (that returns on assets set aside to fund the benefit will be lower than expected). The University should recognise a liability for its obligations under defined benefit plans net of plan assets. This is achieved by estimating the amount of future benefit that employees have earned in return for their service in the current and prior periods, discounted to determine its present value, less the fair value (at bid price) of plan assets. The calculation is performed by a qualified actuary using the projected unit credit method. When the calculation results in a benefit to the University, the recognised asset is limited to the total of any unrecognised past service costs and the present value of benefits available in the form of any future refunds from the plan, reductions in future contributions to the plan or on settlement of the plan and takes into account the adverse effect of any minimum funding requirements.

Employment benefits

Short-term employment benefits such as salaries and compensated absences are recognised as an expense in the year in which the employees render service to the University. Any unused benefits are accrued and measured as the additional amount the University expects to pay as a result of the unused entitlement.

Finance leases

Leases in which the University assumes substantially all the risks and rewards of ownership of the leased asset are classified as finance leases. Leased assets acquired by way of finance lease are stated at an amount equal to the lower of their fair value and the present value of the minimum lease payments at inception of the lease.

Minimum lease payments are apportioned between the finance charge and the reduction of the outstanding liability. The finance charge is allocated to each period during the lease term so as to produce a constant periodic rate of interest on the remaining balance of the liability.

Service concession arrangements

Fixed assets held under service concession arrangements are recognised on the Balance Sheet at the present value of the minimum lease payments when the assets are bought into use with a corresponding financial liability.

Payments under the service concession arrangement are allocated between service costs, finance charges and financial liability repayments to reduce the financial liability to nil over the life of the arrangement.

Operating leases

Costs in respect of operating leases are charged on a straight-line basis over the lease term. Any lease premiums or incentives are spread over the minimum lease term.

Foreign currency

Transactions in foreign currencies are translated to sterling at the foreign exchange rate ruling at the date of the transaction. Monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies at the balance sheet date are retranslated to sterling at the foreign exchange rate ruling at that date. Foreign exchange differences arising on translation are recognised in the Statement of Comprehensive Income.

Fixed assets

Fixed assets are stated at cost or deemed cost less accumulated depreciation and accumulated impairment losses. Certain items of fixed assets that had been revalued to fair value on or prior to the date of transition to FRS102 are measured on the basis of deemed cost, being the fair value at the date of revaluation.

Where parts of a fixed asset have different useful lives, they are accounted for as separate items of fixed assets.

Depreciation

Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write off the cost of fixed assets, less their estimated residual value, over their expected useful lives. For motor vehicles and other items of general equipment this will be between five and ten years. For computer equipment the expected useful life is three years.

Equipment acquired for specific research projects is written off in the year of acquisition along with its matching grant.

Equipment (including computer hardware and software) costing less than £25,000 per individual item, or group of related items which together comprise one operational unit, is written off in the year of acquisition.

Land is not depreciated as it is considered to have an indefinite useful life.

Costs incurred in relation to buildings after initial purchase or construction, and prior to valuation, are capitalised to the extent that they increase expected future benefits to the University. Borrowing costs which are directly attributable to the acquisition, construction or production of a qualifying asset are capitalised.

Straight line depreciation rates for the student accommodation buildings have been separated out between structure, plant and machinery and fit-out. For structure, depreciation is between 5 and 100 years; for plant and machinery, depreciation is between 5 and 40 years; and for fit-out, depreciation is between 5 and 35 years. All other freehold and leasehold buildings are depreciated on a straight line basis over sixty years, except for certain items of minor work which are written off over twenty-five years.

Where any asset is depreciated, no charge is made to Statement of Comprehensive Income in the year of acquisition. In the year of disposal, however, a full year’s charge is made regardless of the timing of the disposal.

No depreciation is charged on assets in the course of construction.

Heritage assets

The University holds a collection of paintings, prints and similar artworks acquired through a combination of donations and purchases. It is the University’s intention to maintain the collection, the majority of which is on public display in the library. These assets are included in the Balance Sheet at market valuation. The University’s external valuer (Lyon & Turnbull) carried out a full valuation of the collection on 18 February 2010. The values were established on the basis of the valuer’s assessment of the likely replacement cost at suitable specialist retail outlets, having given consideration to the quality and condition of the items. These heritage assets are not depreciated.

Investment properties

Investment properties are land and buildings held for rental income or capital appreciation rather than for use in delivering services. Investment properties are measured initially at cost and subsequently at fair value with movements recognised in the Statement of Comprehensive Income. Properties are not depreciated but are revalued or reviewed annually according to market conditions at 31 July each year.

Investments

Fixed and endowment asset investments are included in the Balance Sheet at market value unless this cannot be readily ascertained and the yields are unquantifiable and of a long-term nature, for example seed-corn funding. In such instance, it is considered prudent to charge the cost of the investment to the revenue account in the year of its acquisition. Increases or decreases in value arising on the revaluation of fixed asset investments are carried to the revaluation reserve. Where a permanent diminution in value of an asset occurs, the excess will be charged to the Statement of Comprehensive Income to the extent that it is not covered by a revaluation surplus. The profit or loss on disposal of an asset is accounted for in the year in which the disposal occurs as the difference between the net sales proceeds and the net carrying amount, whether carried at historical cost or valuation.

Investments in jointly controlled entities, associates and subsidiaries are carried at cost less impairment in the University's Balance Sheet. Current asset investments are held at fair value with movements recognised in the Statement of Comprehensive Income.

Investments in equities and gilts are generally treated as fixed asset investments whilst investments in the form of term deposits with banks and other financial institutions which have less than three months to maturity, are shown as cash and cash equivalents. Current asset investments are included at the lower of cost and net realisable value.

Stock

Stock is held at the lower of cost and net realisable value.

Cash and cash equivalents

Cash includes cash in hand, deposits repayable on demand and overdrafts. Deposits are repayable on demand if they are in practice available within 24 hours without penalty.

Cash equivalents are short term, highly liquid investments with a short maturity period of 90 days or less, that are readily convertible to known amounts of cash with insignificant risk of change in value.

Provisions, contingent liabilities and contingent assets

Provisions are recognised in the financial statements when:

• The University has a present obligation (legal or constructive) as a result of a past event;
• It is probable that an outflow of economic benefits will be required to settle the obligation; and
• A reliable estimate can be made of the amount of the obligation.

The amount recognised as a provision is determined by discounting the expected future cash flows at a pre-tax rate that reflects risks specific to the liability.

A contingent liability arises from a past event that gives the University a possible obligation whose existence will only be confirmed by the occurrence or otherwise of uncertain future events not wholly within the control of the University. Contingent liabilities also arise in circumstances where a provision would otherwise be made but either it is not probable that an outflow of resources will be required or the amount of the obligation cannot be measured reliably.

A contingent asset arises where an event has taken place that gives the University a possible asset whose existence will only be confirmed by the occurrence or otherwise of uncertain future events not wholly within the control of the University.

Contingent assets and liabilities are not recognised in the Balance Sheet but are disclosed in the notes.

Accounting for Joint Operations, Jointly Controlled Assets and Jointly Controlled Operations

The University accounts for its share of joint ventures using the gross equity method.

The University accounts for its share of transactions from joint operations and jointly controlled assets in the Statement of Comprehensive Income.

Taxation

The University is an exempt charity within the meaning of Part 3 of the Charities Act 2011 and, as such, is a charity within the meaning of Section 506 (1) of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988. The University is recognised as a charity by HM Revenue & Customs. It is therefore a charity within the meaning of Para 1 of schedule 6 to the Finance Act 2010 and accordingly, the University is potentially exempt from taxation in respect of income or capital gains received within categories covered by section 478-488 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010 (CTA 2010) or section 256 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992, to the extent that such income or gains are applied to exclusively charitable purposes.

The University receives no similar exemption in respect of Value Added Tax. Irrecoverable VAT on inputs is included in the costs of such inputs. Any irrecoverable VAT allocated to fixed assets is included in their cost.

The University’s subsidiaries are liable to Corporation Tax in the same way as any commercial organisation.

Deferred tax is provided in full on timing differences which result in an obligation at the balance sheet date to pay more tax at a future date, or a right to pay less tax at a future date, at rates expected to apply when they crystallise based on current rates and law. Timing differences arise from the inclusion of items of income and expenditure in taxation computations in periods different from those in which they are included in financial statements. Deferred tax assets are more likely than not to be recovered. Deferred tax assets and liabilities are not discounted.

Reserves

Reserves are classified as restricted or unrestricted. Restricted endowment reserves include balances which, through endowment to the University, are held as a permanently restricted fund which the University must hold in perpetuity.

Other restricted reserves include balances where the donor has designated a specific purpose and therefore the University is restricted in the use of these funds.

Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income and Expenditure

Year ended 31 July 2023

	Notes	Consolidated		University
		Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Income
Tuition fees and education contracts	1	196,731	176,097	196,731	176,097
Funding body grants	2	30,693	26,586	30,693	26,586
Research grants and contracts	3	34,331	30,164	34,331	30,164
Other income	4	68,533	51,330	51,958	39,170
Endowment and investment income	5	3,794	400	3,776	360
Donations and endowments	6	302	250	302	250
Total income		334,384	284,827	317,791	272,627
Less: Share of income from joint ventures	4	(327)	(276)	0	0
Net income		334,057	284,551	317,791	272,627
Expenditure
Staff costs	8	168,349	150,910	157,229	141,250
Staff costs associated with USS pension increase	8	(10,055)	47,157	(10,055)	47,157
Other operating expenses	9	129,967	106,442	128,744	104,642
Depreciation	9	16,288	15,578	15,541	14,786
Interest and other finance costs	9	7,874	6,033	8,326	5,967
Total expenditure	10	312,423	326,120	299,785	313,802
Surplus/(deficit) before other gains and losses and share of operating surplus of joint ventures		21,634	(41,569)	18,006	(41,175)
Share of operating surplus/(deficit) in joint ventures	15	0	0	0	0
Gain on investments		103	397	103	397
Surplus/(deficit) for the year		21,737	(41,172)	18,109	(40,778)
Actuarial (loss)/gain in respect of pension schemes		(1,488)	(999)	(1,477)	(981)
Increase/(decrease) in value of joint ventures		0	4	0	0
Total comprehensive profit/(loss) for the year		20,249	(42,167)	16,632	(41,759)
Represented by:
Endowment comprehensive income for the year		177	483	177	483
Restricted comprehensive income for the year		395	264	395	264
Unrestricted comprehensive loss for the year		19,677	(42,914)	16,060	(42,506)
Revaluation reserve comprehensive loss for the year		0	0	0	0
		20,249	(42,167)	16,632	(41,759)

All items of income and expenditure arise from continuing operations.

The Notes to the Accounts form an integral part of these Financial Statements.

Consolidated and University Statement of Changes in Reserves

Year ended 31 July 2023

Consolidated	Income and expenditure account			Revaluation reserve	Total
	Endowment £'000	Restricted £'000	Unrestricted £'000	£'000	£'000
Balance at 1 August 2021	8,429	4,096	218,033	0	230,558
Surplus/(deficit) from the income and expenditure statement	0	0	(41,172)	0	(41,172)
Other comprehensive income	483	264	(1,742)	0	(995)
Transfers between revaluation and income and expenditure reserve	0	0	0		0
Total comprehensive income for the year	483	264	(42,914)	0	(42,167)
Balance at 1 August 2022	8,912	4,360	175,119	0	188,391
Surplus/(deficit) from the income and expenditure statement	0	0	21,737	0	21,737
Other comprehensive income	177	395	(2,060)	0	(1,488)
Total comprehensive income for the year	177	395	19,677	0	20,249
Balance at 31 July 2023	9,089	4,755	194,796	0	208,640

University	Income and expenditure account			Revaluation reserve	Total
	Endowment £'000	Restricted £'000	Unrestricted £'000	£'000	£'000
Balance at 1 August 2021	8,429	4,096	233,937	0	246,462
Surplus/(deficit) from the income and expenditure statement	0	0	(40,778)	0	(40,778)
Other comprehensive income	483	264	(1,728)	0	(981)
Total comprehensive income for the year	8,912	264	(42,506)	0	(41,759)
Balance at 1 August 2022	8,429	4,360	191,431	0	204,703
Surplus/(deficit) from the income and expenditure statement	0	0	18,109	0	18,109
Other comprehensive income	177	395	(2,049)	0	(1,477)
Total comprehensive income for the year	177	395	16,060	0	16,632
Balance at 31 July 2023	9,089	4,755	207,491	0	221,335

The Notes to the Accounts form an integral part of these Financial Statements.

Balance Sheets as at 31 July 2023

	Notes	Consolidated		University
		Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Fixed assets
Tangible assets	12	396,212	389,494	359,262	358,780
Heritage assets	13	798	798	798	798
Investment properties	12	970	1,075	970	1,075
Investments	14	19,046	11,866	72,800	65,620
Investment in joint ventures	15	90	90	0	0
		417,116	403,323	433,830	426,273
Current assets
Stocks	16	331	259	205	158
Debtors	17	34,831	26,688	32,397	23,919
Investments	18	61,328	38,000	61,328	38,000
Cash and cash equivalents		40,449	73,768	38,384	71,868
		136,939	138,715	132,314	133,945
Less: Creditors: amounts falling due within one year	19	(77,350)	(69,795)	(87,025)	(82,229)
Net current assets		59,589	68,920	45,289	51,716
Total assets less current liabilities		476,705	472,243	479,119	477,989
Less: Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year	20	(182,016)	(186,018)	(172,622)	(176,445)
Pension provisions	21	(76,514)	(82,882)	(75,627)	(81,889)
Other provisions	21	(9,535)	(14,952)	(9,535)	(14,952)
Total net assets		208,640	188,391	221,335	204,703
Restricted Reserves
Income and expenditure reserve - endowment reserve	22	9,089	8,912	9,089	8,912
Income and expenditure reserve - restricted reserve	23	4,755	4,360	4,755	4,360
Unrestricted Reserves
Unrealised gain on equity investments		199	122	199	122
Income and expenditure reserve - unrestricted		194,597	174,997	207,292	191,309
Total Reserves		208,640	188,391	221,335	204,703

The Financial Statements were approved by the Governing Body on 27 November 2023 and were signed on its behalf on that date by:

Professor A. Forster
Vice-Chancellor

J. Hamilton
Chair of Council

A. Keeble
Director of Finance

The Notes to the Accounts form an integral part of these Financial Statements.

Consolidated Cash Flow Statement

Year ended 31 July 2023

	Notes	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 (Restated) £'000
Cash flow from operating activities
Surplus/(deficit) for the year		21,634	(41,569)
Adjustment for non-cash items
Depreciation	12	16,288	15,578
Revaluation of investment property	12	105	(195)
(Increase)/Decrease in stocks	16	(72)	25
Decrease in debtors	17	(8,143)	(3,787)
Increase in creditors		5,703	35,378
(Decrease)/Increase in provision		(13,273)	45,636
Adjustment for investing or financing activities
Loss on disposal of tangible fixed assets		10	0
Investment income	5	(3,794)	(400)
Interest payable	9	5,160	5,748
Endowment income		0	0
Net cash inflow from operating activities		23,618	56,414
Cash flows from investing activities
Disposal of non-current asset investments		0	0
(Investment in) short term investments	18	(23,328)	(16,000)
Investment income	5	3,794	400
Payments made to acquire tangible fixed assets	12	(23,016)	(14,113)
Non-current investment acquisitions		(7,077)	(122)
		(49,627)	(29,835)
Cash flows from financing activities
Interest paid	9	(5,160)	(5,748)
Endowment cash received	21	0	0
Repayments of amounts borrowed		(2,150)	(2,079)
		(7,310)	(7,827)
Increase/(Decrease) in cash for the year
Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of the year		(33,319)	18,752
Cash and cash equivalents at end of the year		73,768	55,016
		40,449	73,768

The Notes to the Accounts form an integral part of these Financial Statements.

Notes to the Accounts
for the year ended 31 July 2023

	Consolidated
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
1 Tuition fees and education contracts
Full-time home and EU students	83,422	97,729
Full-time international students	107,696	73,258
Part-time students	1,507	1,824
Non-credit-bearing tuition fees	836	889
NHS contracts	3,146	2,300
Research training support grant	124	97
	196,731	176,097
2 Funding body grants
Recurrent grant
Office for Students Teaching Grant	7,403	7,229
Research England Research Grant	14,567	9,469
OfS Capital Grant	100	30
Research England Capital Grant	2,438	1,437
Specific Grants
OfS National Collaborative Outreach Programme	1,420	1,718
OfS PG Conversion Courses	266	89
OfS Hardship Funding	130	0
OfS Lifelong Learning	(1)	14
OfS Capital Grant (Supporting Student Growth)	0	2,000
Research England Higher Education Innovation Fund	3,821	3,673
Research England Connecting Capability Fund	0	519
Research England QR Strategic Priorities	0	97
Research England Transitions and Transformation	133	29
Research England Enhancing Research Culture	250	240
Research England Participatory Research Funding	52	42
Research England Policy Support Funding	114	0
	30,693	26,586
3 Research grants and contracts
Research Councils	24,404	20,012
UK-based charities	1,419	1,809
UK central government, local authorities and health authorities	3,679	3,232
UK industry, commerce and public corporations	1,405	1,301
European Union government bodies	1,635	1,893
Other overseas	1,733	1,842
Other sources	56	75
	34,331	30,164
4 Other income
Other services rendered:
Income from academic partnerships	4,771	3,343
Other sources	2,134	1,986
Commercial services income	42,882	34,563
Revenue grants	2130	121
Rental income	793	708
Gain on revaluation of investment property	0	195
Other income	15,496	10,138
Income from joint ventures	327	276
	68,533	51,330
5 Endowment and investment income
Investment income on endowments	122	80
Investment income on restricted reserves	108	68
Other investment income	3,564	252
	3,794	400
6 Donations and endowments
New endowments	0	0
New donations with restrictions	302	250
	302	250

Note: The source of grant and fee income, included in notes 1 to 3 is as follows:

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Grant and Fee Income
Grant income from the OfS	9,318	11,080	9,318	11,080
Grant income from other bodies	21,375	15,506	21,375	15,506
Fee income for taught awards (exclusive of VAT)	189,043	169,089	189,043	169,089
Fee income for research awards (exclusive of VAT)	5,816	35,869	5,816	35,869
Fee income from non-qualifying courses (exclusive of VAT)	1,748	1,303	1,748	1,303
Total Grant and Fee Income	227,300	232,847	227,300	232,847

 

	Consolidated
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
7 Surplus for the year
The surplus on continuing operations for the year is made up as follows:
University's surplus/(deficit) for the year	18,109	(40,920)
Surplus generated by subsidiary undertakings and transferred to the University under gift aid		142
Surplus retained by subsidiary undertakings and joint ventures	3,628	(394)
	21,737	(41,172)

		Consolidated
		Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
8 Staff costs
Salaries		122,074	109,120
Social security costs		11,528	10,910
Movement on USS provision		(10,055)	47,157
Other pension costs		34,747	30,880
Total		158,294	198,067
Compensation for loss of office or termination payment, equivalent to statutory redundancy in respect of the end of a fixed term contract(s) lasting over 2 years paid to a member of staff for 2022-23 was £50k (2021-22: NIL). Other pension costs include pension contributions made by the University on behalf of employees who have elected to reduce their wages and salaries when the University introduced its Pensions Plus scheme in April 2009.
Remuneration Package of the Vice-Chancellor:	Note 8i	£	£
Basic Salary		325,624	309,941
Medical Insurance		4,728	4,491
Notional Accommodation		0	0
Accommodation		5,392	11,062
Cleaning		3,370	3,935
Utilities		925	1,091
Pension contributions to USS		74,829	71,519
Salary and Associated Benefits		414,868	402,039
Due to the change in legislation covering the provision of accommodation, the table shows the actual monetary values associated with the occupancy of the house. The notional rental value of accommodation is explained below, the notional value as of October 2022 is £36k.
Remuneration (basic salary) of other higher paid staff, before any salary sacrifice:		No.	No.
£100,000 to £104,999		11	13
£105,000 to £109,999		9	4
£110,000 to £114,999		5	11
£115,000 to £119,999		6	1
£120,000 to £124,999		2	2
£125,000 to £129,999		2	5
£130,000 to £134,999		3	1
£135,000 to £139,999		1	0
£140,000 to £144,999		0	3
£145,000 to £149,999		2	2
£150,000 to £154,999		0	4
£155,000 to £159,999		7	1
£160,000 to £164,999		0	0
£165,000 to £169,999		2	0
£170,000 to £174,999		0	1
£175,000 to £179,999		0	0
£180,000 to £184,999		0	0
£185,000 to £189,999		0	0
£190,000 to £194,999		1	0
		51	48
Average staff numbers by major category:		No.	No.
Academic		986	927
Research		103	108
Senior Support		766	688
Other Support		656	593
General Support		386	399
		2,897	2,715

Key management personnel

Key management personnel are members of the University Steering Group (USG) and are those persons having authority and responsibility for planning, directing and controlling the activities of the University.

	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Key management personnel compensation	1,474	1,404

Trustees

No Trustee has received any remuneration/waived payments from the group during the year. Ten Trustees are also employees of the University but received no additional payment for acting as Trustees. The total expenses paid to or on behalf of 25 council members were £8,187 (2021-22: £4,376 to 25 council members). This represents travel, accommodation and stationery expenses incurred in attending Council, Committee meetings and Charity events in their official capacity.

8 Staff costs (continued)	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Access and Participation
Access Investment	1,115	1,108
Financial Support	0	0
Disability Support (excluding expenditure included in the two categories above)	262	233
Research and Evaluation	221	222
	1,598	1,563

These figures are the staff costs associated with our Access and Participation Plan.

Our total Access and Participation Plan expenditure, including these staff costs of £1,598k are detailed in Note 11

8i Vice-Chancellor’s remuneration package

Details of the Vice-Chancellor’s remuneration package and expenses are published on the University’s website. The following notes describe the elements of the associated benefits set out in note 8:

Medical Insurance: To minimise absence from work on grounds of ill-health, the University part funds medical insurance for the Vice-Chancellor and direct dependent. This is declared to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and reported annually on the P11D form through the Vice-Chancellor’s annual self-assessment.

Accommodation: The University owns a property on the Colchester Campus known as Lake House. This property was constructed at the same time the University was being established, for the specific purpose of enabling the Vice-Chancellor to be resident on campus. It is a condition of contract of the Vice-Chancellor that he must reside in this property and that it is the Vice-Chancellor’s primary residence during his period of office.

In line with current tax treatment, this is classified as a taxable benefit and the benefit value of the residence detailed above is based on a gross rating value agreed with HMRC. Lake House’s location on the Colchester Campus means that there is no opportunity for the University to receive a commercial rental income for this property. Notwithstanding the location, a rental valuation of the Vice-Chancellor’s residence has been carried out in October 2022 and the notional rental value is identified as £36,000 p.a.

The Vice-Chancellor is not required to make rental payments for the property, but the monthly rental value is pensionable. From 6 April 2021 the Vice-Chancellor has been subject to a personal tax liability for this accommodation, for which he receives an accommodation payment. The pensionable value of the property and payment for accommodation are disclosed above.

The accommodation allowance is calculated based on the additional tax liability incurred from the Vice-Chancellor’s residence in Lake House, including an amount reflecting the additional PAYE deductions the University are required to make on payment of the accommodation allowance itself. Both the additional taxable benefits and the accommodation allowance will be reported in the University of Essex’s Financial Statements as part of the Vice-Chancellor’s total remuneration in line with the relevant guidance from the Office for Students at the time.

The Vice-Chancellor makes use of this house to host events for University staff and students and for external stakeholders with an interest in, or supporting, the work of the University. A schedule of events held in the Lake House, hosted by the Vice-Chancellor, is published on the University’s website, describing the purpose of each event held https://www.essex.ac.uk/-/media/documents/about/vc-lake-house-events.pdf?la=en. This is updated on 1 February and 31 July each year. Catering and service for these events is provided by Wivenhoe House Hotel and the Edge Hotel School, both based at the University.

Cleaning: The University bears the costs of maintenance and upkeep of the property in which the Vice-Chancellor is required to reside. All major works need to be approved by the Registrar and Secretary. The cost of cleaning is shared equally between the University and the Vice-Chancellor.

Utilities: The cost of electricity and gas supplied to the property are apportioned between the Vice-Chancellor and the University. This is declared to HMRC and reported annually on the P11D form through the Vice-Chancellor’s annual self-assessment.

Pension Contributions: The Vice-Chancellor is eligible for membership of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), the scheme available to the majority of employees of the University. The Vice-Chancellor was an active member of USS throughout the reporting year.

Pay and reward in the University is overseen by the Remuneration Committee of Council. The composition of the Committee is at
https://www.essex.ac.uk/-/media/documents/about/governance/committees-council.pdf and includes an independent advisor who is external to the University and is not a Council member. The Vice-Chancellor (VC) is not a member of Remuneration Committee.

The University of Essex participates in the national process of collective bargaining with the trade unions undertaken on behalf of employers. Through this process, an agreed level of percentage increase is applied to all points of the nationally agreed pay spine, to reflect the impact of increases in the cost of living on pay. The University’s policy is to apply that percentage increase to the pay of all members of staff. In addition, all members of staff have an opportunity to apply for additional pay through the University’s annual review process in recognition of exceptional performance. The University only considers cases for additional pay for those who submit an application.

The Remuneration Committee reviews the pay and performance of the Vice-Chancellor each year. For this annual review cycle the Vice-Chancellor did not make an application for additional pay through the annual review process, but as for all staff the VC did receive the 3.0% cost of living increase applicable with effect from 1 August 2022. With all other staff, the Vice-Chancellor also received a 2% cost of living increase with effect from 1 February 2023. This reflected a national decision by employers to accelerate payment of a proportion of the cost of living increase for the 2023-24 academic year to an earlier point in the year.

In relation to performance, following consultation with others, through the Appraisal and Personal Development Scheme (APDR), the Chair of Council reviewed the Vice-Chancellor’s performance and set objectives for the following year. These personal objectives are set for the
Vice-Chancellor and these are shared with Remuneration Committee and the whole of Council for comment and are published on the University web site at: https://www.essex.ac.uk/governance-and-strategy/senior-staff/vice-chancellor/pay-and-benefits.

The Remuneration Committee takes into account a range of benchmarking information in considering pay levels. In relation to the Vice-Chancellor, his salary is benchmarked annually using the benchmarking framework agreed with Council. There are four benchmarking comparator groups, based on:

• Universities in the top 30 in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide;
• Institutions ranked amongst the top 25 in both the REF and TEF;
• Institutions that comprise part of Cluster X in the 2022 Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF);
• Universities that form part of the University’s UCAS comparator group.

Benchmarking data for the Vice-Chancellor is provided to the Committee for information, whether or not an application is made for additional pay through the annual review process. Remuneration Committee reviews the benchmarking framework annually to ensure comparators continue to be appropriate and relevant. The Vice-Chancellor’s salary remained comparable to the upper quartile of these comparators.

The Committee assesses the Vice-Chancellor’s performance, drawing upon evidence from the University’s overall performance against the KPIs contained in the Strategic Plan, the Strategic Priority Actions set for the VC at the beginning of the preceding academic year and the outcomes of the APDR performance review discussion with the Chair of Council.

The Committee noted that the Vice-Chancellor did not make an application for performance-related pay in the 2021-22 annual review that would impact on his pay in the 2022-23 year.

The Chair of Council had sought feedback on the Vice-Chancellor’s performance from external members of Council and there was very strong endorsement of the Vice-Chancellor’s leadership and performance.

In relation to performance against KPIs, the Committee noted the impact of the methodological change to Times Good University Guide (TGUG) criteria (facilities spend) impacting on the University’s ranking. Across other KPIs. Performance had been strong in most areas, with levels of performance indicating that the University was making good progress towards the goals set out in the Strategic Plan. The Committee noted a small number of measures where the KPIs may not be met or exceeded by the end of the Strategic Plan period and the reasons for this were noted.

Overall, the assessment of the Chair of Council and Remuneration Committee was that the Vice-Chancellor’s performance and leadership had been excellent. The Committee noted the long service of the Vice-Chancellor, now in his 11th year, and the impact this can have on relative pay compared with other Vice-Chancellors.

The relationship between the Vice-Chancellor’s contractual remuneration and that for all other employees is reviewed annually.

The head of the provider’s basic salary is 8.71 times (2021-22 - 9.30) the median pay of all staff, where the median pay is calculated on a full-time equivalent basis for the salaries paid by the provider to its staff.

The head of the provider’s total remuneration (including other benefits) is 8.84 times (2021-22 - 10.89) the median total remuneration of all staff, where the median pay is calculated on a full-time equivalent basis for the salaried paid by the provider to its staff.

Following implementation of the latest OfS requirements on the basis for calculating the above pay ratios, the University has put in place measures to capture information on the pay of agency and similar staff and has included these in the information on pay ratios set out above.

9 Other operating expenses

	Consolidated
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Other operating expenses
Books and periodicals	5,986	4,859
Equipment and consumables	5,285	4,931
Food, drink and hospitality	3,060	1,740
Gas, water and electricity	4,712	4,341
Cleaning	1,101	906
Grants to Students' Union	3,319	3,291
Insurance	552	415
Long-term maintenance programme and minor works	1,755	1,616
Other expenses	1,275	13,881
Postage, telephones, printing and stationery	880	1,016
Professional and consultancy fees	25,518	10,984
Rates and rental of premises	13,606	13,056
Repairs and routine maintenance of estates	3,970	1,988
Research and survey fieldwork	12,945	10,169
Scholarships (fee waivers and bursaries)	21,297	14,696
Travel, subsistence and accommodation	2,542	1,025
IT/AV Equipment	9,857	9,192
Fire safety and security	508	401
Adverts and marketing	2,251	2,311
Agents commission	9,548	5,624
	129,967	106,442
Included within professional, auditor and consultancy fees above are the following amounts receivable by the external auditor: Statutory audit fee: £173,600 (2021-22: £126,100) US GAAP Conversion of 2022-23 Accounts £NIL (2021-22: £45,000) Audit-related assurance services: £6,000 (2021-22: £15,000) Taxation advisory services: £NIL (2021-22: £38,000) Depreciation, impairment and amortisation
Depreciation charge on tangible fixed assets	16,288	15,578
	16,288	15,578
Finance charges
Bank interest payable	5,160	5,748
Net charge on pension scheme	2,714	285
	7,874	6,033

10 Analysis of total expenditure by activity

	Staff costs £'000	Other operating expenses £'000	Depreciation and amortisation £'000	Interest paid £'000	2022-23 Total £'000	2021-22 Total £'000
Academic departments and centres	85,318	12,278	15	0	97,611	124,244
Academic services	16,434	15,862	0	0	32,296	36,861
Research grants and contracts	12,261	14,478	571	0	27,310	23,471
Residences and catering	11,148	21,408	2,338	1,510	36,404	35,961
Premises	7,158	9,047	765	0	16,970	16,423
Administration	15,237	7,345	0	0	22,582	28,332
Other services rendered	376	920	0	0	1,296	1,304
General education expenditure	3,049	31,399	0	0	34,448	22,704
Student and staff facilities	6,966	8,768	93	55	15,882	13,455
Early retirements and severances	50	0	0	0	50	26
Other expenses	297	8,462	12,506	6,309	27,574	23,339
	158,294	129,967	16,288	7,874	312,423	326,120

11 Access and Participation

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Access Investment	1,880	1,811	1,880	1,811
Financial Support	1,855	1,383	1,855	1,383
Disability Support	311	275	311	275
Research and Evaluation	221	224	221	224
	4,267	3,693	4,267	3,693

£1,599k (2021-22: £1,563) of these costs are already included in the overall staff costs figures included in the financial statements, see note 8.

Our published access and participation plan can be found at https://www.essex.ac.uk/about/governance/access-and-participation-plan.

12 Tangible assets

Consolidated	Freehold Land and Buildings £'000	Leasehold Land and Buildings £'000	Fixtures, Fittings and Equipment £'000	Assets in the Course of Construction £'000	Heritage Assets £'000	Investment Properties £'000	Total £'000
Cost
At 1 August 2022	417,097	11,711	73,593	17,636	798	1,075	521,910
Adjustments	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Additions	1,508	(2)	7,335	14,175	0	0	23,016
Transfers	12,631	72	941	(13,644)	0	0	0
Disposals	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Impairment	0	0	(44)	0	0	0	(44)
Revaluations	0	0	0	0	0	(105)	(105)
At 31 July 2023	431,236	11,781	81,825	18,167	798	970	544,777
Depreciation
At 1 August 2022	86,785	1,653	42,105	0	0	0	130,543
Charge for the year	7,622	48	8,618	0	0	0	16,288
Impairments	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Transfers	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Disposals	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Impairment	0	0	(34)	0	0	0	(34)
At 31 July 2023	94,407	1,701	50,689	0	0	0	146,797
Net Book Value
At 31 July 2023	336,829	10,080	31,136	18,167	798	970	397,980
At 31 July 2022	330,312	10,058	31,488	17,636	798	1,075	391,367
University
Cost
At 1 August 2022	393,266	11,119	71,467	6,918	798	1,075	484,643
Adjustments	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Additions	1,508	0	6,904	7,621	0	0	16,033
Transfers	4,903	0	963	(5,866)	0	0	0
Disposals	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Impairment	0	0	(44)	0	0	0	(44)
Revaluations	0	0	0	0	0	(105)	(105)
At 31 July 2023	399,677	11,119	79,290	8,673	798	970	500,527
Depreciation
At 1 August 2022	82,279	1,227	40,484	0	0	0	123,990
Charge for the year	6,996	48	8,497	0	0	0	15,541
Transfers	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Disposals	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Impairment	0	0	(34)	0	0	0	(34)
At 31 July 2023	89,275	1,275	48,947	0	0	0	139,497
Net Book Value
At 31 July 2023	310,402	9,844	30,343	8,673	798	970	361,030
At 31 July 2022	310,987	9,892	30,983	6,918	798	1,075	360,653

University Land and Buildings include £48.8m (2021-22: £48.7m) in respect of freehold land which is not depreciated. Included in the cost of fixed assets is aggregated interest capitalised of £2.8m (2021-22: £2.8m).

Additions to University land and buildings in the year includes £7.7m (2021-22: £8.7m) for assets in the course of construction, for which no depreciation charge has been made.

On the date of transition to FRS 102, the University revalued its land and student accommodation at fair value and as a first time adopter, in accordance with paragraph 35.10 (c) of the 2015 SORP, it is using this fair value as the deemed cost of the assets. The valuation was prepared by Gerald Eve, an independent valuer, with an effective date of 1 August 2014. The valuation was prepared using Depreciated Replacement Cost and Fair Value equivalent to Market Value methods. At the date of the valuation, land had a net book value of £5.2m and student accommodation had a net book value of £50.9m.

On the date of transition to FRS 102, an asset with the value of £3.6m was transferred from property, plant and equipment to investment property. The valuation was also prepared by Gerald Eve, with an effective date of 1 August 2014 and using Depreciated Replacement Cost and Fair Value equivalent to Market Value methods. This property was revalued at 31 July 2023 using the rate of the average growth in retail buildings in Eastern England.

13 Heritage assets

The University Equipment includes assets valued at £798k for works of art deemed to be heritage assets which were capitalised in 2009-10. The University's external valuer (Lyon & Turnbull) carried out a full valuation of the collection at 18 February 2010. The values were established on the basis of the valuer's assessment of the likely replacement cost at suitable specialist retail outlets, having given consideration to quality and condition for a similar item.

14 Investments

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
At 1 August	11,866	11,347	65,620	64,200
(Disposals)/Additions	7,180	519	7,180	1,420
Revaluations credited to the revaluation reserve	0	0	0	0
At 31 July	19,046	11,866	72,800	65,620
Comprising:
Equities	11,801	11,697	11,801	11,697
Subsidiary companies:
University of Essex Knowledge Gateway Holdings Ltd	0	0	37,026	37,026
Universal Accommodation Group Ltd	0	0	2,893	2,893
University of Essex Campus Services Ltd	0	0	2,734	2,734
Wivenhoe House Hotel Ltd	0	0	11,101	11,101
Other investments	7,245	169	7,245	169
	19,046	11,866	72,800	65,620

15 Investment in Joint Ventures

	Year Ended 31 July 2023		Year Ended 31 July 2022
	£'000	£'000	£'000	£'000
Southend-on-Sea Forum Management Limited
Income and expenditure account
Income		327		276
Expenditure		(327)		(276)
Profit before tax		0		0
Balance sheet
Fixed assets	0		0
Current assets	316	316	227	227
Creditors: amounts due within one year	(226)		(137)
Creditors: amounts due after more than one year	0	(226)	0	(137)
Share of net assets in Southend-on-Sea Forum Management Ltd		90		90

Southend-on-Sea Forum Management Ltd (SoSFML) is a joint venture between University of Essex, Southend-on-Sea City Council and South Essex College of Further and Higher Education. The joint venture was established in order to oversee the property management of the Forum building in Southend which is the UK's first integrated academic and public library and combines the modern teaching facilities of South Essex College, the research and learning environment of the University of Essex and the municipal library of Southend-on-Sea Borough Council. For the year ending 31 July 2023 it recorded a surplus of £nil (2021-22: £nil).

During the year, SoSFML Ltd purchased goods and services to the value of £NIL from the University (2021-22: £1,813) of which £NIL was outstanding at 31 July 2023 (2021-22: £nil). SoSFML Ltd provided services to the University to the value of £361k (2021-22: £289k) with a credit of £2k outstanding at 31 July 2023 (2020-21: £nil).

Southend-on-Sea Forum Management Ltd has been accounted for as a joint venture in accordance with FRS 102 Section 15. The level of profit included within the consolidated financial statements is as shown above and in the summary of joint ventures note.

Total investment in Joint Ventures:

	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Total income from joint ventures recognised in the Income Statement
Income from SoSFML	327	276
Total income from joint ventures	327	276
Total profit/(loss) from joint ventures recognised in the Income Statement
Profit/(loss) from SoSFML	0	0
Total profit/(loss) from joint ventures	0	0
Share of gross assets and liabilities in joint ventures:
Share of net assets in SoSFML	90	89
Total share of gross assets in joint ventures	90	89

16 Stock

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Stock	331	259	205	158

17 Debtors

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000 (Restated)	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000 (Restated)
Amounts falling due within one year:
Trade debtors	3,134	3,790	3,042	3,581
Student fees	6,361	3,305	6,361	3,305
Research debtors	4,785	4,332	4,785	4,332
Prepayments and accrued income	20,431	15,224	17,530	12,791
Other debtors	120	37	30	30
Amounts due from subsidiary companies	0	0	649	(120)
	34,831	26,688	32,397	23,919

There has been a change to the prior year reported figures for research debtors and research grants received on account due to an interpretation error.

Previously reported figures for the Group and University:

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2021 £'000	Previously Reported Year Ended 31 July 2021 £'000	Movement £'000
Research debtors	4,982	24,221	(24,221)
Research grants received on account	(19,457)	(38,696)	38,696

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Previously Reported Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Movement £'000
Research debtors	4,332	30,917	(26,585)
Research grants received on account	(17,516)	(44,101)	26,585

Revised amounts through cashflow

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2021 £'000	Movement £'000
Debtors	(26,585)	(19,239)	(7,346)
Creditors	26,585	19,239	7,346

Group cashflow disclosure movements:

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Previously Reported Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Movement £'000
(Decrease)/increase in debtors	(3,787)	(11,133)	(7,346)
Increase/(decrease) in creditors	35,378	42,724	7,346

The reclassification has had no impact on the net result for the year, the net assets or the net Statement of Cashflows.

18 Investments

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Deposits maturing:
In one year or less	61,328	38,000	61,328	38,000
	61,328	38,000	61,328	38,000

Deposits are held with banks and building societies operating in the London market and licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority with more than 24 hours maturity at the balance sheet date. The interest rates for these deposits are fixed for the duration of the deposit at time of placement.

At 31 July 2023 the weighted average interest rate of these fixed rate deposits was 4.28% per annum and the remaining weighted average period for which the interest rate was fixed on these deposits was 103 days. The fair value of these deposits was not materially different from the book value.

19 Creditors: amounts falling due within one year

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Student loans	2,266	2,150	2,266	2,150
Unsecured loans	0	0	0	0
Payments received in advance	29,470	27,558	29,315	26,879
Research grants received on account	15,918	17,516	15,918	17,516
Trade creditors	5,815	3,627	5,150	3,588
Bank Overdraft	0	0	0	0
Social security and other taxation payable	3,383	3,132	2,910	2,720
Accruals and deferred income	20,498	15,812	17,602	13,302
Amounts due to subsidiary companies	0	0	13,864	16,074
	77,350	69,795	87,025	82,229

There has been a change to the prior year reported figures for research debtors and research grants received on account due to an interpretation error.

Previously reported figures for the Group and University:

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2021 £'000	Previously Reported Year Ended 31 July 2021 £'000	Movement £'000
Research debtors	4,982	24,221	(24,221)
Research grants received on account	(19,457)	(38,696)	38,696

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Previously Reported Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Movement £'000
Research debtors	4,332	30,917	(26,585)
Research grants received on account	(17,516)	(44,101)	26,585

Revised amounts through cashflow

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2021 £'000	Movement £'000
Debtors	(26,585)	(19,239)	(7,346)
Creditors	26,585	19,239	7,346

Group cashflow disclosure movements:

	Restated Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Previously Reported Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Movement £'000
(Decrease)/increase in debtors	(3,787)	(11,133)	(7,346)
Increase/(decrease) in creditors	35,378	42,724	7,346

The reclassification has had no impact on the net result for the year, the net assets or the net Statement of Cashflows.

20 Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Analysis of secured and unsecured loans:
Due within one year or on demand	2,266	2,150	2,266	2,150
Due between one and two years	2,266	2,150	2,266	2,150
Due between two and five years	5,824	7,640	5,824	7,640
Due in five years or more	65,318	65,885	65,318	65,885
	75,674	77,825	75,674	77,825
Due within one year or on demand	(2,266)	(2,150)	(2,266)	(2,150)
Due after more than on year	73,408	75,675	73,408	75,675
Other creditors:
Due between one and two years	6,054	5,773	741	325
Due between two and five years	3,401	5,100	2,963	975
Due in five years or more	99,153	99,470	95,510	99,470
	108,608	110,343	99,214	100,770
Total	182,016	186,018	172,622	176,445

In 2013 the University renegotiated its loan facility with Lloyds. As at 31 July 2023, the University had loans with Lloyds totalling £75.6m (2021-22: £77.8m), repayable by 2043.

On 14 July 2017 the University contracted to issue £50m of 2.87% unsecured bonds due 2037 and £15m of 3.11% unsecured bonds due 2047. The bonds were issued at 100% of their principal amount on 29 September 2017 and the proceeds of issue amounted to £65m. Interest is payable on the 29 March and 29 September each year commencing 29 March 2018. Unless previously redeemed, the bonds will be redeemed at their principal amount on 29 September 2037 and 29 September 2047 respectively.

21 Provisions for liabilities

Consolidated	Obligation to fund deficit on USS pension £'000	Obligation to find deficit on SAUL pension £'000	Defined Benefit Obligations £'000	Total Pensions Provisions £'000	Total Other £'000
At 1 August 2022	83,932	0	(1,050)	82,882	14,952
Utilised in year	(5,712)	0	43,270	37,558	(5,417)
Additions/(Reductions) in year	(1,706)	0	(42,220)	43,926	0
At 31 July 2023	76,514	0	0	76,514	9,535

University	Obligation to fund deficit on USS pension £'000	Obligation to find deficit on SAUL pension £'000	Defined Benefit Obligations £'000	Total Pensions Provisions £'000	Total Other £'000
At 1 August 2022	82,922	0	(1,033)	81,889	14,952
Utilised in year	(5,635)	0	40,341	34,706	(5,417)
Additions/(Reductions) in year	(1,660)	0	(39,308)	(40,968)	0
At 31 July 2023	75,627	0	0	75,627	9,535

The University of Essex has implement an asset ceiling of £nil in 2022-23.

USS and SAUL deficit

The obligation to fund the past deficits on the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London ("SAUL") arises from the contractual obligation with the pension schemes for total payments relating to benefits arising from past performance. Management have assessed future employees within the USS scheme and salary payment over the period of the contracted obligation in assessing the value of this provision. Further details in relation to the University's pension schemes can be found at note 28.

22 Endowment Reserves

Restricted net assets relating to endowments are as follows:

	Restricted permanent endowments £'000	Expendable endowments £'000	2023 Total £'000	2022 Total £'000
Balances at 1 August
Capital	1,848	7,064	8,912	9,671
Accumulated income/(expenditure)	0	0	0	(1,242)
	1,800	7,064	8,912	8,429
New endowments	0	0	0	0
Transfer to Restricted Donation	0	(8)	(8)	(25)
Transfer from Restricted Donation	0	0	0	164
Investment income	25	97	122	80
Expenditure	(1)	(7)	(8)	(9)
	24	90	114	71
Increase in market value of investments	15	56	71	273
At 31 July	1,887	7,202	9,089	8,912
Represented by:
Capital	1,863	7,112	8,975	10,083
Accumulated income/(expenditure)	24	90	114	(1,171)
	1,887	7,202	9,089	8,912
Analysis by type of purpose:
Scholarships and bursaries	1,753	0	1,753	1,724
Prize funds	47	86	133	131
General	87	7,116	7,203	7,057
	1,887	7,202	9,089	8,912
Analysis by asset:
Current and non-current asset investments			8,114	8,043
Cash and cash equivalents			975	869
			9,089	8,912

23 Restricted Reserves

Reserves with restrictions are as follows:

	Donations
	2023 Total £'000	2022 Total £'000
Balances at 1 August	4,360	4,096
New donations	262	250
Transfer from Restricted Permanent Endowment	0	25
Transfer to Restricted Expendable Endowment	8	(164)
Investment income	108	47
(Decrease)/increase in market value of investments	32	124
Expenditure	(15)	(18)
	125	153
At 31 July	4,755	4,360
Analysis of other restricted funds/donations by type of purpose:
Scholarships and bursaries	1,300	1,038
Prize funds	363	356
General	3,092	2,966
	4,755	4,360
Analysis by asset:
Current and non-current asset investments	3,687	3,654
Cash and cash equivalents	1,068	706
	4,755	4,360

24 Consolidated reconciliation of net debt

	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Net debt 1 August	(31,057)	(67,888)
Movement in cash and cash equivalents	7,841	36,831
Net debt 31 July	(38,898)	(31,057)
Change in net debt	(7,841)	36,831

	Consolidated
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Analysis of net debt:
Cash and cash equivalent	101,777	111,768
Borrowings: amounts falling due within on year
Secured loans	(2,266)	(2,150)
	99,511	109,618
Borrowings: amounts falling due after more than one year
Secured loans	(73,409)	(75,675)
Unsecured Bond	(65,000)	(65,000)
	(138,409)	(140,675)
Net debt	(38,898)	(31,057)

25 Capital and other commitments

Provision has not been made for the following capital commitments at 31 July 2023:

	Consolidated		University
	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Commitments contracted for	10,273	3,755	8,201	1,915
Authorised but not contracted for	12,857	0	12,857	0
	23,130	3,755	21,058	1,915

26 Lease obligations

Total rentals payable under operating leases:

	31 July 2023 Consolidated
	Land and Buildings £'000	Plant and Machinery £'000	Total £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Payable during the year	686	173	859	859
Future minimum lease payments due:
Not later than one year	722	129	851	858
Later than 1 year and not later than 5 years	1,207	0	1,207	876
Later than 5 years	6,361	0	6,361	2,974
Total lease payments due	8,290	129	8,419	4,708

Leases are for land and buildings.

The original leases are for a unit at Southend and land at East 15, Loughton.

During 2015-16 the University built the North Teaching Centre, and in August 2016 sold the modular components at a cost of £2.9m and entered into a lease to secure their use for seven years.

During 2022-23 the University leased office space at the Knowledge Gateway Parkside development.

27 Disclosure of related party transactions

The related parties of the University are the wholly and partially owned subsidiary undertakings (listed in note 29) of these Financial Statements, the University of Essex Students' Union and the members of the Council.

In the preparation of these Financial Statements, the University has taken advantage of the exemptions contained within Section 33.1A of FRS 102 relating to transactions and balances eliminated on consolidation.

All transactions and balances with the subsidiary undertakings have been eliminated on consolidation and therefore no disclosure is given.

Due to the nature of the relationship between the entities, the University of Essex Students' Union is considered to be a related party. In the year to 31 July 2023 the University paid the Union a revenue grant of £2.971m (2021-22: £2.926m). The Union's income and expenditure account shows the following:

	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Income	2,805	2,745
Expenditure	(2,744)	(2,720)
Operating surplus before and after transfers from/(to) reserves	61	25

Nashwa Alsakka was a Council member during 2022-23 who also sat on Essex Students' Union Board.

All transactions involving organisations in which a member of Council may have an interest are conducted at arm's length and in accordance with the University's Financial Regulations and normal procurement procedures. Given that the University Council includes members drawn from public and private sector organisations, some transactions take place with organisations in which a member of Council may have an interest. However, these transactions occur at the operational level where they are instigated by members of staff and approved by senior management under delegated authority. There is no direct benefit to members of Council.

Members of Council, its sub-committees and key management personnel are required to declare all outside interests. When an item arises in which a member has an interest, it must be declared and the member concerned may not take part in that debate or any related decisions.

The Director of Finance received £28.8k (2021-22: £26.4k) during the course of the year from UMAL Ltd, a company which provides cover for terrorism risk, for serving as a Director of that company.

28 Pension Schemes

The University has three principal pension schemes for employees. These are the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (SAUL). The assets of the schemes
are held in separate trustee-administered funds. All three schemes are defined benefit schemes and are contracted out of the State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme.

On 1 September 2014 the University of Essex Pension Scheme (UEPS) merged into the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (SAUL). This effectively means the Scheme ceased on 1 September 2014, as all assets and liabilities were transferred to SAUL.

USS and SAUL are mutual schemes and the assets are not hypothecated to individual institutions and it is therefore not possible to identify the University's share of the underlying assets and liabilities.

LGPS became a closed scheme from August 1997 and subsequently all non-academic and related staff who were not members of a pension scheme could join the UEPS. When UEPS became a closed scheme from March 2004, all new staff were eligible to join USS.

Since June 2014 all staff between the grades of 1 to 6 are eligible to join SAUL while staff graded 7 to 11 are eligible to join USS.

Two of the University's subsidiary companies, Wivenhoe House Hotel Limited and University of Essex Campus Services Limited pay into personal pension schemes and a scheme called NEST for some employees. These are all defined contribution schemes.

The total pension cost for the University and its subsidiary undertakings was:

	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Contribution to USS	28,553	25,812
Contribution to LGPS	210	218
Contributions to UEPS	0	0
Contribution to SAUL	5,254	3,792
Contribution to NEST	354	257
Contribution to personal pensions	0	0
LGPS additional University costs to fund past service deficiency	773	1,365
USS additional University costs to fund past service deficiency	(10,055)	47,157
SAUL additional University costs to fund past service deficiency	0	0
LGPS actuarial adjustment to pension costs	(397)	(564)
Total pension cost	24,692	78,037
The total FRS 102 pension liability for the University and its subsidiary undertakings was:
USS pension liability	(76,514)	(83,932)
SAUL pension liability	0	0
Total pension liability	(76,514)	(82,882)

Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS)

The University participates in the Universities Superannuation Scheme (the scheme). Throughout the current and preceding periods, the scheme was a defined benefit only pension scheme until 31 March 2016 which was contracted out of the State Second Pension (S2P). The assets of the scheme are held in a separate trustee-administered fund. Because of the mutual nature of the scheme, the scheme's assets are not hypothecated to individual institutions and a scheme-wide contribution rate is set. The University is therefore exposed to actuarial risks associated with other institutions' employees and is unable to identify its share of the underlying assets and liabilities of the scheme on a consistent and reasonable basis and therefore, as required by Section 28 of FRS 102 "Employee Benefits", accounts for the scheme as if it were a defined contribution scheme. As a result, the amount charged to the income and expenditure account represents the contributions payable to the scheme in respect of the accounting period. Since the institution has entered into an agreement (the Recovery Plan) that determines how each employer within the scheme will fund the overall deficit, the University recognises a liability for the contributions payable that arise from the agreement to the extent that they relate to the deficit and the resulting expense in the income and expenditure account.

The latest available full actuarial valuation of the scheme was at 31 March 2020 ("the valuation date"), which was carried out using the projected unit method.

Since the institution cannot identify its share of the scheme assets and liabilities, the following disclosures reflect those relevant for the scheme as a whole.

The 2020 valuation was the sixth valuation for USS under the scheme-specific funding regime introduced by the Pensions Act 2004, which requires schemes to have sufficient and appropriate assets to cover their technical provisions. At the valuation date, the value of the assets of the scheme was £66.5 billion and the value of the scheme's technical provision was £80.6 billion indicating a shortfall of £14.1 billion and a funding ratio of 83%.

No data is yet available with regards to the 2023 actuarial valuations of the USS scheme.

Defined benefit liability numbers for the scheme have been produced using the following assumptions:

	At 31 July 2023	At 31 July 2022
Discount rate	5.49%	3.33%
Pensionable salary growth	3.00%	3.18%

The assumptions for pensionable salary growth and headcount are set at 3% and 1.4% respectively (2022: 3.18% and 3.8% respectively) for year 1 of the valuation, which are in line with the University's financial planning. It is acknowledged that these assumptions are sensitive to changes. Due to the current economic environment it is considered that movements in these assumptions are likely however the values disclosed are reflective of the best information available as at 31 July 2023.

The main demographic assumption used relates to the mortality assumptions. Mortality in retirement is assumed to be in line with the Continuous Mortality Investigation's (CMI) SlNA tables as follows:

Male member's mortality 101% of S2PMA "light" (2022: 101% of S2PMA ["light"])
Female member's mortality 95% of S3PFA (2022: 95% of S3PFA)

Use of these mortality tables reasonably reflects the actual USS experience. To allow for further improvements in mortality rates the CMI 2019 projections with a 1.8% pa long term rate for males and 1.6% for females, were also adopted. The current life expectancies on retirement at age 65 are:

	At 31 July 2023	At 31 July 2022
Males currently aged 65	24 years	23.9 years
Females currently aged 65	25.6 years	25.5 years
Males currently aged 45	26 years	25.9 years
Females currently aged 45	27.4 years	27.3 years
Scheme assets	65.5bn	65.5bn
Total scheme liabilities	80.6bn	80.6bn
FRS 102 total scheme deficit	14.1bn	14.1bn
FRS 102 total funding level	83%	83%

In accordance with the requirements of the SORP, the University currently recognises a provision for its obligation to fund past deficits arising within the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). A new deficit recovery plan was put in place as part of the 2020 valuation, which requires payment of 6.2% of salaries over the period 1 April 2022 until 31 March 2024, at which point the rate will increase to 6.3%. The 2022 deficit recovery liability reflects this plan. Details of this provision, which has been discounted at a rate of 5.49% as at 31 July 2023, are included in note 21 to the financial statements.

28 Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)

The Essex County Council LGPS is a funded defined benefit scheme, with the assets held in separate trustee administered funds. The employer contribution rate for 2022-23 was 23.9% (2021-22: 23.9%).

From 01 April 2014, all members of the scheme transferred to a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) benefit structure. As a consequence, the cost of benefit accrual is expected to fall. This will allow an increasing proportion of the expected asset return to be used to eliminate the funding shortfall.

The value of the employer's liability is assessed every three years in accordance with the advice of a qualified actuary. The assumptions and other data that have the most significant effect on the determination of the contribution levels are as follows:

Last actuarial valuation: 31 Mar 2022
Actuarial method: Projected Unit
Pension increases: 2.9% per annum
Salary scale increases: 3.9% per annum
Market value of assets at date of last valuation (whole fund): £9,650m

Actuarial Assumptions

The major assumptions used by the actuary for University of Essex were:

	At 31 July 2023 %	At 31 July 2022 %
Financial assumptions
Rate of increase in salaries	3.80	3.90
Rate of increase in pension payments	2.80	2.90
Expected return on assets	5.51	0.82
Discount rate for liabilities	5.25	3.40
CPI assumptions	2.80	2.90
The major assumptions used by the actuary for University of Essex Commercial Services were:
Financial assumptions
Rate of increase in salaries	3.80	3.85
Rate of increase in pension payments	2.80	2.85
Expected return on assets	5.51	0.82
Discount rate for liabilities	5.20	3.40
CPI assumptions	2.80	2.85
The return on the Fund (on a bid value to bid value basis) for the year to 31 July 2023 is estimated to be 5.51% (2022: 0.82%). The actual return on Fund assets over the year may be different from the estimated return. Management have relied on the fund administrators to calculate return on the investments: The split of assets between investment categories was the same for both University of Essex and University of Essex Commercial Services:
Split of assets between investment categories
Equities	58.00	57.00
Government Bonds	1.00	2.00
Other Bonds	0.00	4.00
Property	8.00	9.00
Cash	3.00	4.00
Alternative assets	16.00	14.00
Other managed funds	14.00	10.00

Expected rate of return on assets in the scheme

	Consolidated 31 July 2023 £'000	University 31 July 2023 £'000	Consolidated 31 July 2022 £'000	University 31 July 2022 £'000
Estimated asset share	82,811	76,535	80,875	74,780
Present value of scheme liabilities	(40,591)	(37,227)	(49,507)	(45,452)
Changes in effect of asset ceiling	(42,220)	(39,308)	(30,518)	(28,295)
Impact of deferred tax liability on pension asset	0	0	0	0
Surplus in the scheme	0	0	1,050	1,033
	204%	206%	163%	165%

The expected rate of return on assets is based upon market expectations, at the beginning of the period, for investment returns over the entire life of the related obligation.

Demographic/Statistical assumptions

The actuary has adopted a set of demographic assumptions that are consistent with those used for the most recent fund valuation, which was carried out at 31 March 2022. The post retirement mortality tables adopted are the S3PA tables with a multiplier of 110% for males (2022: 110%) and 110% for females (2022: 110%). These base tables are then projected using the CMI 2022 Model (2022: CMI 2020 Model), allowing for a long-term rate of improvement of 1.25% pa. (2022: 1.25% pa.), smoothing parameter of 7 (2022: 7) and an initial addition parameter of 0.0% pa (2022: 0% pa) and a 2022 weighting of 25% (2022: n/a), 2021 weight parameter of 0% (2022: 5%) and 2020 weigh parameter of 0% (2022: 5%).

	At 31 July 2023 CMI 2020	At 31 July 2022 CMI 2018
Life expectancy:
Male current pensioner aged 65	20.7 years	21.0 years
Female current pensioner aged 65	23.2 years	23.5 years
Male future pensioner aged 65	22.0 years	22.3 years
Female future pensioner aged 65	24.6 years	24.9 years

 

	Consolidated At 31 July 2023 £'000	University At 31 July 2023 £'000	University At 31 July 2022 £'000
Amounts recognised in the profit and loss statement are:
Service cost	368	364	461
Net interest on the defined liability	(48)	(47)	(30)
Administration expenses	48	44	34
Total operating charge	368	361	465
Re-measurements in other comprehensive income
Return on Fund assets in excess of interest	1,685	1,558	(552)
Change in financial assumptions	12,558	11,409	13,433
Change in demographic assumptions	1,137	1,055	1,177
Other actuarial gains/losses	(483)	(483)	0
Experience gain/(loss) on defined benefit obligation	(5,514)	(4,965)	(116)
Changes in effect of asset ceiling	31,349	29,257	(14,923)
Asset ceiling implemented	(42,220)	(39,308)	0
Remeasurement of the (defined liability)/net assets	(1,488)	(1,477)	(981)
Movements in deficit during the year
Deficit in scheme in 1 August	1,050	1,033	1,420
Movements in the year:
Current service charge	(293)	(289)	(461)
Past Service cost, including curtailments	(75)	(75)	0
Contributions by employer including unfunded	806	805	1,059
Net interest on the defined liability	1,079	1,009	234
Liabilities assumed on settlements	0	0	0
Return on assets less interest	1,685	1,558	(552)
Actuarial loss	7,698	7,016	14,494
Settlement and Curtailment	0	0	0
Deferred Tax Asset	0	0	0
Administration expenses	(48)	(44)	(34)
Changes in effect of asset ceiling	31,349	29,257	(14,923)
Interest on asset ceiling	(1,031)	(962)	(204)
Asset ceiling implemented	(42,220)	(39,308)	0
Deficit in scheme at 31 July	0	0	1,033
The asset ceiling limits the net defined funded benefit asset to be the projected employer service cost over the expected active membership of the Fund, less the certified employer contributions, discounted at the accounting discount rate as at 31 July 2022.
Change in benefit obligation during the period to 31 July
At beginning of year	49,507	45,452	61,241
Current service cost	293	289	461
Interest cost on pension liabilities	1,638	1,503	929
Change in financial assumptions	(12,558)	(11,409)	(13,433)
Change in demographic assumptions	(1,137)	(1,055)	(1,177)
Experience (gain)/loss on defined benefit obligation	5,514	4,965	116
Estimated benefits paid net of transfers in	(2,760)	(2,611)	(2,704)
Past service costs, including curtailments	75	75	0
Contributions by Scheme participants	59	58	59
Unfunded pension payments	(40)	(40)	(40)
Changes in effect of asset ceiling	0	0	0
At end of year	40,591	37,227	45,452
Analysis of movement in the market value of the scheme assets
At beginning of year	80,875	74,780	75,829
Interest on assets	2,717	2,512	1,163
Return on assets less interest	1,685	1,558	(552)
Other actuarial gains/(losses)	(483)	(483)	0
Administration expenses	(48)	(44)	(34)
Contributions by employer including unfunded	806	805	1,059
Contributions by Fund participants	59	58	59
Estimated benefits paid plus unfunded net of transfers in	(2,800)	(2,651)	(2,744)
At end of year	82,811	76,535	74,780

28 Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (SAUL)

General description of the pension scheme

The University of Essex participates in the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (“SAUL”), which is a centralised defined benefit scheme within the United Kingdom and is contracted-out of the Second State Pension (prior to April 2016).

SAUL is an independently-managed pension scheme for the non-academic staff of over 50 colleges and institutions with links to higher education.

Pension benefits accrued within SAUL currently build up on a Career Average Revalued Earnings (“CARE”) basis.

University of Essex is not expected to be liable to SAUL for any other current participating employer’s obligations under the Rules of SAUL, but in the event of an insolvency event of any participating employer within SAUL, an amount of any pension shortfall (which cannot otherwise be recovered) in respect of that employer, may be spread across the remaining participating employers and reflected in the next actuarial valuation.

Funding Policy

SAUL’s statutory funding objective is to have sufficient and appropriate assets to meet the costs incurred by the Trustee in paying SAUL’s benefits as they fall due (the “Technical Provisions”). The Trustee adopts assumptions which, taken as a whole, are intended to be sufficiently prudent for pensions and benefits already in payment to continue to be paid and for the commitments which arise from Members’ accrued pension rights to be met.

The Technical Provisions assumptions include appropriate margins to allow for the possibility of events turning out worse than expected. However, the funding method and assumptions do not completely remove the risk that the Technical Provisions could be insufficient to provide benefits in the future.

A formal actuarial valuation of SAUL is carried out every three years by a professionally qualified and independent actuary. The last actuarial valuation was carried out with an effective date of 31 March 2020. Informal reviews of SAUL’s position, reflecting changes in market conditions, cash flow information and new accrual of benefits, are carried out between formal valuations.

The funding principles were agreed by the Trustee and employers in June 2021 and are due to be reviewed at SAUL’s next formal valuation in 2023.

At the 31 March 2020 valuation SAUL was 94% funded on its Technical Provisions basis. However, market movements following the valuation date were positive and the Trustee and the Employers agreed to allow for post-valuation experience up to 30 April 2021. As SAUL was in surplus on its Technical Provisions basis at that date, no deficit contributions were required. However, the Trustee and the Employers have agreed that the ongoing Employers' contributions will increase from a rate of 16% of CARE salaries to 19% of CARE salaries from
1 April 2022 and to 21% of CARE salaries from 1 January 2023.

Accounting Policy

The University of Essex is a Participating Employer in SAUL. The actuarial valuation applies to SAUL as a whole and does not identify surpluses or deficits applicable to individual employers. As a whole, the market value of SAUL’s assets at 31 March 2020 was £3,612m representing 94% of the liabilities. The market value of SAUL's assets at 30 April 2022 was £4,639m representing 109% of the estimated liabilities.

It is not possible to identify an individual Employer’s share of the underlying assets and liabilities of SAUL. University of Essex accounts for its participation in SAUL as if it were a defined contribution scheme and pension costs are based on the amounts actually paid (i.e. cash amounts) in accordance with paragraphs 28.11 of FRS 102.

Although there was a Technical Provisions deficit at 31 March 2020, allowing for post-valuation experience to 30 April 2021, SAUL had a Technical Provisions surplus. Therefore, no deficit contributions were required following the 2020 valuation and there is no defined benefit liability (i.e. the present value of any deficit contributions due to SAUL) to be recognised by The University of Essex.

29 Subsidiary undertakings

The subsidiary companies (all of which are registered in England & Wales), wholly-owned or effectively controlled by the University, are as follows:

Company	Principal Activity	At 31 July 2023 £1 Shares	At 31 July 2022 £1 Shares
University of Essex Enterprises	Acquisition, protection and licensing of intellectual property from the University	2	2
Wivenhoe House Hotel Ltd	Development and operation of a hotel school	11,100,620	11,100,620
University of Essex Campus Services Ltd	Management of commercial activities at the University	2,734,000	2,734,000
University of Essex Knowledge Gateway Holdings Ltd	Holding land on behalf of the University for development as a Research Park	37,025,955	37,025,955
University of Essex Knowledge Gateway Ltd	Development and marketing of a Research Park	28,885,277	28,885,277
East 15 Acting School Ltd	Dormant throughout the year	2	2
Universal Accommodation Group Ltd	Holding land on which student accommodation is located	1	1
Eastern HE Cost Sharing Ltd	Provision of internal audit services	100	100
SEA Essex Sdn. Bhd. Registered in Malaysia		0.18	0.18

Trading results of wholly owned subsidiaries:

	Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
University of Essex Enterprises Ltd*	(9)	0
Wivenhoe House Hotel Ltd*	(244)	3
University of Essex Campus Services Ltd*	(153)	(974)
University of Essex Knowledge Gateway Holdings Ltd*	121	84
Universal Accommodation Group Ltd*	301	0
University of Essex Knowledge Gateway Ltd*	4,266	581
Eastern HE Cost Sharing Ltd	0	0
SEA Essex Sdn. Bhd. (Registered in Malaysia)	2	11
	4,284	(295)

* Trading results before tax and gift aid payments. These results have been included in the consolidated financial statements. All subsidiaries have a year end date of 31 July.

30 Agency Arrangements

	University
	2022-23 £'000	2021-22 £'000
OfS Teaching Grant
Payments received from OfS	63	26
Payments made to partner institutions	(63)	(26)
Balance unspent at 31 July	0	0
Research England Research Grant
Payments received from Research England	0	503
Payments made to partner institutions	0	(503)
Balance unspent at 31 July	0	0

These funds are received by the University in respect of its partner institutions. The income and the related payments are therefore excluded from the Income & Expenditure Account.

The University has partnership arrangements for the delivery of Higher Education programmes with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

31 Supplementary Schedule for the United States Department of Education (Restated)

There has been a change to the prior year reported figures for the USS Supplementary Scheme as noted in the 2022 revised column. The errors are due to misinterpretation of the presentational requirements in the prior year. The changes have no impact on the primary statements of the Group and are confined to the below supplementary disclosures for the United States Department of Education.

In satisfaction of its obligation to facilitate student's access to US federal aid, the University of Essex is required, by the Department of Education, to present the following Supplemental Schedule in a prescribed format.

The amounts presented within the schedules have been:

• prepared under the historical cost conversion, subject to the revaluation of certain fixed assets;
• prepared using United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice, in accordance with Financial Reporting Standard 102 (FRS 102) and the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting for Further and Higher Education (2019 edition);
• presented in thousands pounds sterling.

The schedules set out how each amount disclosed has been extracted from the financial statements. As set out above, the accounting policies used in determining the amounts disclosed are not intended to and do not comply with the requirements of Accounting Principles Generally Accepted in the United States of America.

Notes			Year Ended 31 July 2023 £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 (Restated) £'000	Year Ended 31 July 2022 £'000
Expendable Net Assets
B/S	Statement of Financial Position - Net assets without donor restrictions	Net assets without donor restrictions	194,796	175,119	175,119
22 & 23	Statement of Financial Position - Net assets with donor restrictions	Net assets with donor restrictions	13,844	13,272	13,272
	Statement of Financial Position - Related party receivable and Related party note disclosure	Secured and Unsecured related party receivable
	Statement of Financial Position - Related party receivable and Related party note disclosure	Unsecured related party receivable
12	Statement of Financial Position - Property, Plant and equipment, net	Property, plant and equipment, net (includes Construction in progress)	397,980	391,367	390,292
FS Note line 8A	Note of the Financial Statements - Statement of Financial Position - Property, plant and equipment - pre-implementation	Property, plant and equipment - pre-implementation	335,286	347,142	323,605
	Note of the Financial Statements - Statement of Financial Position - Property, plant and equipment - post-implementation with outstanding debt for original purchase	Property, plant and equipment - post-implementation with outstanding debt for original purchase
FS Note line 8D	Note of the Financial Statements - Statement of Financial Position - Property, plant and equipment - post-implementation without outstanding debt for original purchase	Property, plant and equipment - post-implementation without outstanding debt for original purchase	44,431	26,589	49,051
FS Note line 8C	Note of the Financial Statements- Statement of Financial Position - Construction in progress	Construction in progress	18,263	17,636	17,636
	Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use assets, net	Lease right-of-use asset, net
	Note of the Financial Statements - Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use asset pre-implementation	Lease right-of-use asset pre-implementation
	Note of the Financial Statements - Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use asset post-implementation	Lease right-of-use asset post-implementation
	Statement of Financial Position - Goodwill (and other intangibles)	Intangible assets
21	Statement of Financial Position - Post-employment and pension liabilities	Post-employment and pension liabilities	76,514	82,882	82,882
20	Statement of Financial Position - Note Payable and Line of Credit for long-term purposes (both current and long term) and Line of Credit for Construction in process	Long-term debt - for long term purposes	75,674	77,825	77,825
20	Statement of Financial Position - Note Payable and Line of Credit for long-term purposes (both current and long term) and Line of Credit for Construction in process	Long-term debt - for long term purposes pre-implementation	75,674	77,825	77,825
	Statement of Financial Position - Note Payable and Line of Credit for long-term purposes (both current and long term) and Line of Credit for Construction in process	Line of Credit for Construction in process
	Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use asset liability	Lease right-of-use asset liability
	Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use asset liability pre-implementation	Pre-implementation right-of-use leases
	Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use asset liability post-implementation	Post-implementation right-of-use leases
	Statement of Financial Position - Annuities	Annuities with donor restrictions
	Statement of Financial Position - Term endowments	Term endowments with donor restrictions
	Statement of Financial Position - Life Income Funds	Life income funds with donor restrictions
20	Statement of Financial Position - Perpetual Funds	Net assets with donor restrictions: restricted in perpetuity	1,887	1,848	1,848
Total Expenses and Losses
10	Statement of Activities - Total Operating Expenses (Total from Statement of Activities prior to adjustments)	Total expenses without donor restrictions - taken directly from Statement of Activities	312,423	326,120	278,693
5 & CSCI	Statement of Activities - Non-Operating (Investment return appropriated for spending), Investments, net of annual spending gain (loss), Other components of net periodic pension costs, Pension-related changes other than net periodic pension, changes other than net periodic pension, Change in value of split-interest agreements and Other gains (loss) - (Total from Statement of Activities prior to adjustments)	Non-Operating and Net Investment (loss)	(2,409)	198	(46,759)
5 & CSCI	Statement of Activities - (Investment return appropriated for spending) and Investments, net of annual spending, gain (loss)	Net investment losses	(3,897)	(797)	397
	Statement of Activities - Pension related changes other than periodic pension	Pension-related changes other than net periodic costs
Modified Net Assets
B/S	Statement of Financial Position - Net assets without donor restrictions	Net assets without donor restrictions	194,796	175,119	175,119
22 & 23	Statement of Financial Position - total Net assets with donor restrictions	Net assets with donor restrictions	13,844	13,272	13,272
	Statement of Financial Position - Goodwill (and other intangibles)	Intangible assets
	Statement of Financial Position - Related party receivable and Related party note disclosure	Secured and Unsecured related party receivable
	Statement of Financial Position - Related party receivable and Related party note disclosure	Unsecured related party receivable
Modified Assets
B/S	Statement of Financial Position - Total Assets	Total Assets	554,055	542,038	568,623
	Note of the Financial Statements - Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use asset pre-implementation	Lease right-of-use asset pre-implementation
	Statement of Financial Position - Lease right-of-use asset liability pre-implementation	Pre-implementation right-of-use leases
	Statement of Financial Position - Goodwill (and other intangibles)	Intangible assets
	Statement of Financial Position - Related party receivable and Related party note disclosure	Secured and Unsecured related party receivable
	Statement of Financial Position - Related party receivable and Related party note disclosure	Unsecured related party receivable
Net Income Ratio
B/S	Statement of Activities - Change in Net Assets Without Donor Restrictions	Change in Net Assets Without Donor Restrictions	19,677	(42,914)	(42,167)
5 & CSCI	Statement of Activities - (Net assets released from restriction), Total Operating Revenue and Other Additions and Sale of Fixed Assets, gains (losses)	Total Revenue and Gains	330,263	284,151	284,151