Senior staff salary details kept secret despite ruling

813 words
8 January 2015
The Times Higher Education Supplement
TTHDS
Issue: 2185
English
2015, TSL Education Limited
Institutions claim releasing information would harm commercial interests. Jack Grove reports

Many universities are refusing to publish salary details of their senior administrative staff, despite official
guidance that advises greater pay transparency.

Of the 37 institutions that responded to a Times Higher Education request for information about top-earning
non-academic staff, 20 declined to give details of how much senior administrators were paid.

That refusal comes just months after a landmark legal case, in which Kings College London succeeded in
keeping the salaries of highly paid professors under wraps but was ordered by a judge to disclose the job
titles and salary bands of all administrative staff on its principals leadership team who earned more than
100,000 a year.

Judge Anisa Dhanji ruled that there was a legitimate public interest in knowing, for example, if a senior
administrator had been paid 50,000 more than a department dean, as what does that indicate about the
colleges priorities?

Senior staff in an organisation that receives large amounts of public funds should expect greater public
accountability, she added.

However, Kings which argued that these salary details are commercially sensitive is to appeal the
decision, while other universities also claim that such information is confidential.

In response to THEs request made under the Freedom of Information Act, a majority of institutions said that
releasing the information would be a risk to their commercial interests or that it would be a breach of staff
privacy arguments dismissed by Ms Dhanji.

Five institutions City University London, Keele University, Queen Mary University of London, the University
of East Anglia and Lancaster University even refused to say how many of their administrative staff earned
more than 100,000 a year.

City University London said it believed that its academic, strategic and commercial interests outweigh the
public interest in disclosure.

Keele said that it did not have to disclose the information as only 30 per cent of its funds came from public
sources unlike local authorities, which are wholly public-funded.

Adalbert Lubicz, who initially requested the salary information from Kings, said it was clear that universities
were completely ignoring the now well-established principle that the most highly paid staff cannot hide their
salaries behind data protection laws.

These peoples salaries are after all paid from the public purse and they are in the top 3 per cent of earners
in the country, he said.

Show and tell

Of the 14 universities that disclosed the number of higher earners, the University of Cambridge had the most
non-academic staff earning more than 100,000 a year (32), but did not provide further details.

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Imperial College London said that 28 of its non-academic staff earned at least 100,000 a year, compared
with 291 academics, but it declined to list any of their salary bands. At the University of Leeds, 16
professional staff earned more than 100,000.

The University of Birmingham had nine professional service staff on 100,000 or more a year, as did the
University of Aberdeen. At the University of Nottingham the figure was seven, the University of Reading six
and the University of Bath just two.

Of those who did provide full details, the University of Surrey had the highest number of non-academic staff
on 100,000 or more a year (17), including the chief financial officer (160,000 to 170,000) and the
vice-president of marketing and communications (120,000 to 130,000). Only 26 academics earned more
than 100,000, Surrey said.

Both the University of Sheffield and the University of Bristol had 12 professional service staff on salaries of
more than 100,000 a year, of whom the highest earner on the leadership team was, in both cases, the
registrar, on 170,000 to 179,000.

Oxford Brookes University had 10 administrative staff on more than 100,000, with the registrar also the
highest paid on 130,000 to 140,000 a year.

The London School of Economics had nine professional service staff earning more than 100,000, of whom
the chief financial officer earned the most (180,000 to 189,000).

The University of Essex had three non-academic staff on more than 100,000 a year, with the registrar
earning 150,000 to 160,000, while Goldsmiths, University of London had three, of whom the registrar
earned 140,000 to 150,000.

Universities are not obliged to disclose the salary details of senior academic staff after Kings successfully
overturned that part of an original decision by the Information Commissioners Office on the disclosure of high
salaries at universities. Ms Dhanji accepted the Kings argument that there was a real and significant risk of
prejudice to its commercial interests if the information was published.

jack.grove@tesglobal.com

Document TTHDS00020150108eb1800003

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