Sustainability

HEFCE requires that all universities should be introducing measures to ensure the sustainability of their activities.

Sustainability is a far ranging requirement covering a wide range of areas at varying levels of detail including money, people, buildings, equipment and ‘green’ issues.

With regard to fEC the aim is to ensure the sustainability of research activity, in the first instance. A condition of the additional funding through fEC, QR, and SRIF etc., is that Institutions take responsibility for sustainability. Achieving sustainability is therefore an objective that each institution will have to plan and implement. The target date is 2009.

The fEC definition of sustainability is as follows:

"An institution is being managed on a sustainability basis, if, taking one year with another, it is recovering its full economic costs across its activities as a whole and is investing in infrastructure at a rate adequate to maintain its future productive capacity appropriate to the needs of its strategic plan and students, sponsors, and other customer requirements".

A review of sustainability requirements has been undertaken by the University’s Internal Auditors and a full university review of sustainability is taking place in 2008