30 June 2008
The Council has considered the remarks made at the Discussion of this Report on 10 June 2008 (Reporter, p. 891).
The Council notes the support expressed by the Board of Scrutiny for the policy of achieving a balanced budget. The Council agrees with the Board that the University's finances remain vulnerable to unforeseen circumstances. This emphasizes the need for a variety of sustainable funding streams.
Professor Whittington raised the issue of the University's retirement policy. The University's approach to assessing requests from members of the assistant and the academic staff to continue working beyond their statutory retirement ages is published at http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/policy/retirement/criteria.html. In the light of experience gained in the first full year of operation of the policy, the Joint Committee of the Council and the General Board on Human Resources is currently reviewing the policy and will be making recommendations to the Council and the General Board, probably before the end of this academical year. The size and balance of the University's workforce is of central importance to maintaining the University's world class position in teaching and research. In a resource-constrained environment there will always be a tension to be resolved between retaining existing staff beyond their normal retirement age and appointing new staff to support fresh initiatives developed in the strategic plans of both School and non-School institutions.
Two members of the Council signed notes of dissent to the Report, and remarks by them were made, commenting in particular on the budget process, and how to fix the cost of central services. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Planning and Resources addressed the points made in his introductory remarks at the Discussion and the Council endorses these comments. The Council supports the work of the Planning and Resources Committee (of which one of the speakers is a member) and of the Resource Management Committee in improving budgetary decisions with our present substantially devolved framework. The Council intends to hold an informative discussion of budgetary and resource matters, with the Chairs of the Schools and the Pro-Vice-Chancellors in participatory attendance, at its strategic meeting to be held in September 2008.
Professor Evans referred to the acceptance of benefactions. Major benefactions are scrutinized from a legal and ethical point of view by the Executive Committee of the Council. Professor Evans referred to conditions attached to benefactions: the attachment of conditions to benefactions goes back many centuries, as is evidenced by J. W. Clark's Endowments of the University of Cambridge (CUP, 1904). The terms on which benefactions are accepted are published in the Notices of Benefactions or in the regulations put forward for approval by the Regent House.
The opportunity has been taken to correct an error in the table of building projects attached to paragraph 31 of the Report (p. 794). The funding for the Physics of Medicine building should be read as being provided from both the HEFCE SRIF Round 3 programme and the Wolfson Foundation.
The recommendations of the Report are for the approval of the allocations from the Chest for the coming financial year. The Council is accordingly submitting a Grace to the Regent House (Grace 2, p. 917) for the approval of the recommendations in the Report.