Reading update

Although Reading has still not provided details of the £120million its owes to the National Institute for Research in Dairying Trust, for which it acts as sole trustee, a couple of letters and a blog post have provided a bit more insight.

Reading’s UCU branch has published a letter from the acting vice-chancellor, Robert van der Noort, which argues that the £120m is not a debt.  I was told by Reading press office that the money owed to the trust is a loan and that interest is payable.  (As an aside, I first contacted Reading in mid-January and spoke to them at length over a week before publication, when I gave them a list of questions. These were reiterated in the email to which the letter refers. They have still not answered these.)

Following a staff vote of no confidence, van de Noort published an Open Letter on Reading’s website. It contained the following paragraph:

Undoubtedly, some past activities and investments, such as our Malaysia campus, have not performed as well as we would have liked. Others have given a positive financial return for the institution, which we have reinvested in necessary improvements to our campus environment, teaching and research infrastructure and student experience – including the redevelopment of a modern library. Despite views to the contrary, the NIRD land sale is one of these and all considerable net proceeds of the sale will over time be reinvested in research in food and agriculture at the University. (my emphasis)

The future of the loss-making Malaysia campus is now under review. More pertinent to our concerns, Reading management here appears to admit that money coming from the trust should have been spent on research relevant to the trust’s objects.

The key point is that Reading does not have that money currently to hand and “over time” funds will have to come from elsewhere to match the £120m. That has financial implications for university, despite what has been said so far and irrespective of arguments over what exactly constitutes a “debt”.

In a blog originally intended for wonkhe but appearing today at Times Higher Education, van der Noort expends a lot of words saying not very much but does confirm the outlines of what we reported:

The article in The Guardian highlighted an issue that we have already dealt with, relating to the sale of land belonging to a charity for which the university was both trustee and beneficiary. Acting on the best advice available, we took steps last year to resolve this, and there are no wider implications for the university group’s finances. This concerned a historical issue of governance that needed to be put right.

Reading have as yet not explained how the matter has been resolved (if it has – we have yet to hear from Office for Students) and, again, the article makes no mention of the loan.