The Queen's College Record 2023

Credit: John Cairns
FROM THE BURSAR
Dr Andrew Timms
Bursar
The past financial year was dominated by concerns about
inflation. Energy costs were initially the main worry: they
had doubled (from roughly £450k to £900k per annum in
an overall operating budget of nearly £11m), and forecasts
ranged from the troubling to the terrifying. However, as the
year wore on it became clear that the budgeted expenditure
on this front was unlikely to be exceeded. This meant that
we could get back to a more traditional worry—pay. The
cost-of-living crisis has bitten the College’s employees
particularly hard: Oxford is an acutely expensive city in
which to work and live (particularly in respect of housing
costs). The College accelerated several pay awards and in particular brought forward
by several months its implementation of the annual increase in the Oxford Living
Wage, which is an enhanced version of the national Living Wage Foundation wage
for those earning the lowest salaries in College. Our lowest-paid workers have
therefore probably not seen their pay eroded in real terms, but, as is common across
society as a whole, many other employees are poorer now than they were a couple
of years ago, and this comes against a particular backdrop of longstanding concerns
about academic pay and conditions. The challenges on this front are very
considerable.
Reports and College Activities
When I became Bursar, my predecessor told me that the College’s financial
model was well positioned for periods of high inflation. The general idea is that an
endowment that is heavily invested in equities will retain its purchasing power. This
sounds plausible but it is not hard to find historical periods when it has not worked
well. That is one way of introducing the performance of the endowment, which
generated a total return of around 8%; this return comprised solid equity growth
(we are almost exclusively a passive investor nowadays: discuss!), a small decrease
in commercial property valuations, and a notable uplift in agricultural property.
The latter relates in particular to the disposal of two parcels of land for residential
development at Keresley, Coventry, which occurred after the year-end and is a
pleasing conclusion to many decades of careful and patient work by the College and
my predecessors. My working rule is that if an investment goal takes X decades to
be achieved, the Fellows will take X minutes to plan to spend it: in that sense it may
be reassuring that we have maintained our methodical and disciplined approach to
the financial management of the College, noting that ‘windfalls’ like Keresley (which
will generate receipts of some £25m) simply increase the amount of income the
College can sustainably draw from its investments. Slow and steady wins the race.
The word sustainably in the preceding paragraph points to another growing concern.
The College does not currently have an express policy on environmental sustainability
College Record 2023 | The Queen’s College 35