As we near the end of our financial year (31 July 2023), you are reminded of the continued need to limit our non-pay spend. This Financial Year has been very challenging as a number of external factors outside University control have impacted upon us. These are unavoidable, sector wide issues that have affected every institution in Higher Education in the UK.
The University continues to work within extremely challenging financial conditions. We must all take steps to help the University through these times and we all have a critical role to play through continuing to minimise all spend in every area.
Most urgently, we need your support in ensuring we significantly reduce end-of-year outlay. In previous years, we have seen a significant increase in spending as the Financial Year End gets closer. This cannot happen this year and therefore any unspent budget for 22/23 must only be used where absolutely essential. Budgets will remain tight over next year, too, so rather than deferring spending we all need to be doing everything possible to eliminate non-essential spend completely. All spend must be carefully considered, and only unavoidable, essential or urgent spend can occur in future. Essential spend should contribute to income generation and the experience / support of our students, which will help with retention, and be in line with our agreed strategic priorities. This restriction includes any future planned travel, with anything not yet booked only likely to be approved if it is absolutely unavoidable.
I appreciate you will continue to get purchasing and expenditure requests from within your School or Department and encourage you to share this email with staff as required to help respond to these. Budget holders should also review planned expenditure and consider if any proposed projects can be paused, deferred, or cancelled.
To help with our planning, it would be appreciated if you could notify our Procurement team of any significant essential spend that needs to be incurred between now and year-end, with as much advance notice as possible. Similarly, any queries relating to this can also be forwarded to the Procurement Team, who will be closely monitoring spend between now and the end of July. Spend over £5,000 will require Business Justification and pre-clearance for any commitments.
A further announcement on Non Pay may be made in future. Thank you for your continued support.