Pay cut means Hugh Brady loses initial £20k of £300k salary

Bristol VC Hugh Brady will forego £20k of his annual salary under the newly-announced pay cut scheme.

In a statement to The Bristol Tab, the University of Bristol confirmed that Brady will take a voluntary 20 per cent pay cut until “there is more clarity regarding the results of the 2020-21 student recruitment cycle.”

Brady’s £300k annual salary between May and August equals £100k, of which he is initially losing £20k.

The rest of the University Executive Board are also taking a 10 per cent voluntary pay cut, initially for the same period. There is no publicly available data on the current salaries of the Executive Board.

50 per cent of the savings will go to the University of Bristol Student Hardship Fund, and the remaining 50 per cent will “accrue as savings to the University budget”.

Assuming that Brady’s regular pay package will resume in September, this means that a total of £10k of his salary will be available to students via the hardship fund.

Brady (centre-right) with staff on strike in 2019

In the statement, Brady thanked staff for their hard work, and said that many had asked “what they can do to help the University through this challenging time”, calling this “a powerful expression of Bristol’s collegial community”.

He added: “As one of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities, we are determined to play our part in the local, national and global fight against COVID-19 and recognise our obligation to contribute to the regional and national economic recovery effort in the future.”

This comes as cross-party MPs push the government for more financial support for students struggling as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Many students who rely on part time jobs to pay for their living expenses are not eligible for either the government’s job retention scheme, or Universal Credit.

The Daily Mail reported yesterday that universities nationally could face a funding crisis due to overseas students staying away.

Today, Bristol West Lib Dem spokesperson, James Cox, sent a letter to the Universities Minister, writing that the government financial aid package “fails to take into account the financial uncertainty for the 2.38 million university students currently studying in the UK”.

The university has also backtracked on firing 84 temporary workers, instead paying them through the government’s job retention scheme.