King's College London

King’s Financial Statements for the year ending 31 July 2024 were approved by Council on 18 November. These are now available here.

The results show an extraordinary surplus of £327m, but £323m of that surplus is simply an accounting recognition associated with the expected contributions in the future to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) deficit. As USS is no longer in deficit, we do not need to show the potential cost of contributing to the deficit. This is a non-cash transaction and does not affect our day-to-day budgeting.

Taking out the effect of the USS movement, King’s made a small surplus of £4m on a turnover of £1,270m. The operating surplus is a lot tighter than in recent years as our income only increased by 3% to £1,270m while expenditure increased by 9% to £1,266m.

Income growth was subdued largely because we did not recruit as many students as we wanted in October 2023, with tuition fees being around £40m lower than our budget target. Expenditure grew reasonably strongly, with a significant national pay award, increased King’s London Weighting payments, and an increase of 4% in colleagues working at King’s. This meant salary costs increased by £72m or 11%.

Despite the shortfall against tuition fee targets, we were largely able to continue with expenditure plans because of our underlying financial strength. This included £100m of capital expenditure, and the approval of major projects across our campuses. We have also developed the planning of the Bush House South West Wing project, and a decision will be made on starting the construction phase early in 2025.

Clearly, it is not sustainable to have an income growth of 3% and an expenditure growth of 9%, but the new financial year has started with encouraging news on our income.

There have been lots of reports about the financial pressures in higher education, and King’s is subject to the same pressures. The key variable for all universities is the success in recruiting home and international students. King’s was successful in our student recruitment for October 2024, and we are currently forecasting that we have hit our tuition fee budget target. This is a great tribute to everyone involved in the recruitment process, and now in teaching and providing excellent services to our students.

King’s is both a magnificent academic institution and a very large economic entity. Our strategy is to make operating surpluses so that we can invest in our academic endeavours for the benefit of our students and our colleagues. Strong financial performances in the future, in the face of even greater challenges in recruiting students or winning research funding, are essential for our long-term academic success.

If you have any questions regarding the above or the university’s Financial Accounts, please direct your query to Vice President (Finance) and Chief Financial Officer Malcolm Ace on malcolm.ace@kcl.ac.uk.