Treasurer’s Report As we envisaged in my report for last year’s College Report, Covid has continued to dominate our collegiate lives in 2020-21. Last year we had a loss of £2m as Covid had a dramatic impact on our rental income from our retail properties, on our conference income, and on our student rental income (we waived student rents for Trinity Term 2020 when our students were not in residence). This year much of this still pertains, although the impact on student rental income was not quite so significant, and we anticipate a further loss of £1.5m. The strength of the college endowment (we are now exactly mid table in college endowments) and the assistance of the government furlough scheme has given us the financial heft to absorb this without recourse to redundancies, although we have had had to cut our cloth accordingly to contain its impact, as you would expect.
During the year we also bought the long-term lease on 25-27 Little Clarendon Street (the building immediately west of the Vaughan arcade), giving us three shops at on the ground floor and a flat above each shop. We now own all the buildings in that Walton Street/Little Clarendon street corner and we own the freehold. We also completed the refurbishment of Bedford House which is now a teaching/function room. Following on from a commitment we gave as part of getting planning permission for the Catherine Hughes building, we will be making Bedford House available for local community use during September each year. In terms of our investments, our endowment has more than recovered the losses we experienced last year. During the year, we also completed the process of divesting from all our fossil fuel extraction related investments. The proceeds raised have been re-invested sustainably.
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Picture by John Cairns
More positively we have just finished our £4m refurbishment of the kitchen and pantry, which you will remember had reached the end of their life shortly before the pandemic hit. We now have a state-of-the-art kitchen and our catering team are delighted. We expect great things...
ANDREW PARKER, COLLEGE TREASURER
Looking forward to the year ahead, next summer we are planning to put a sound absorbing material onto the dining hall ceiling in an attempt to soften the somewhat oppressive acoustics we experience in there during formal dinners. It won’t completely solve the problem but we anticipate an improvement. ANDREW PARKER
