Pay summaries for the members of the senate and university leadership team

The request was partially successful.

Dear University of Leicester,

Please could you provide the remuneration packages for each of the individual members of the university leadership team. Please could you also provide the salaries of the members of the senate for the most recent complete financial year.

Yours faithfully,

Angela Bretton

Dear Angela,

I write to acknowledge receipt of your request, dated 29th July 2016, made under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Please note the effective date of the request, i.e. date of receipt of your request by the University of Leicester for processing, is 29th July 2016 and that the latest date by which the University must respond under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is 30th August 2016.

I will arrange for the information to which you are entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to be supplied to you as soon as reasonably possible, and in any event within the period set out by the Act.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any queries regarding your request.
Regards,

Paul Starkey
Senior Information Assurance Officer

Information Assurance Services,
University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK

t: +44 (0)116 229 7945
e:  [email address]
w: www.le.ac.uk

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Dear Angela,

I write on behalf of the University of Leicester in response to your request, dated 29th July, made under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Our response is as follows.

We are not required under our accounts directive from the Higher Education Funding Council to disclose the salaries of individual members of ULT, except for that of the President and Vice-Chancellor. We also believe that the remuneration packages of individual members of ULT are personal information and commercially sensitive so we are refusing this request under Sections 40(2) and 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act.

Section 40(2) of the Act states that the personal information of third parties is exempt if its disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles or Section 10 of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Section 43(2) states that “information is exempt information if its disclosure under the Act would, or would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it)”.

The University of Leicester operates within a competitive environment, and is in competition not only with other institutions within the UK, but also with higher education establishments across the world. We believe that the release of salary information for identifiable staff members could jeopardise the commercial interests of the University by providing an advantage to competitors within the sector, and also by affecting current and future negotiations with new staff.

Because Section 43(2) is a qualified exemption we are obliged to undertake a public interest test. Whilst we accept that there is a public interest in knowing how universities are spending funds, we do not believe this outweighs the public interest in universities being able to operate competitively with one another. The release of this information could lead to institutions trying to outbid one another in order to secure the services of senior staff, as well as affecting negotiations with new staff who believe they can request higher salaries due to being aware of what other comparable staff members are earning. A consequence of this could be more money being spent. As such we find the public interest in the exemption being engaged outweighs that of providing the requested information

From 2015/16 onwards we will be disclosing the total amount of the remuneration to ULT in our financial statements, although will not be showing this for each individual member. The data will be published in our 2015/16 financial statements in December and will show:-

Pay costs (including the President and Vice Chancellor): £1.547 million
Benefits (President and Vice-Chancellor only: £4,000
Pension contributions (including the President and Vice Chancellor): £245,000

The Remuneration packages are set by the Remuneration Committee. Details of the Committee can be found at https://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/governance... Members are absent from the Committee when their own remuneration is considered.

With regard to the salary of the President and Vice Chancellor we are withholding this under Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act as it is information intended for future publication as it will be available in our 2015/16 financial statements published in December.

Because Section 22 is a qualified exemption we are obliged to undertake the Public Interest Test. Whilst we accept there is a public interest in the salary of the President and Vice Chancellor being made available, we believe there is a greater public interest in such individualised information being as accurate as possible, and the financial statements are still in the process of being audited. Previous years’ statements are freely available online at http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/finance/sta...

The membership of Senate includes a wider group of other heads of departments and we believe that remuneration packages of members of Senate are personal information and commercially sensitive and so we are withholding these under Sections 40(2) and 43(2) as per the argument already given above.

If you have any concerns or wish to complain about any aspect of this response then in the first instance please contact the University's Data Protection Officer (Mr Henry Stuart: 0116 229 7945, [email address])

Please be aware that it is also your legal right under Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act, to apply to the Information Commissioner for a decision whether a request for information made to the University has been dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the Act. It should be noted that there is a requirement that there will be no undue delay in making the application and there is an expectation that the complainant will have exhausted the University's internal complaints procedure.

Complaints to the Information Commissioner should be addressed to:

FoI Compliance Team (Complaints)
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

I hope you find this response helpful. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any queries regarding the above.

Regards,

Paul Starkey
Senior Information Assurance Officer

Information Assurance Services,
University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK

t: +44 (0)116 229 7945
e:  [email address]
w: www.le.ac.uk

Follow us on Twitter or visit our Facebook page

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