St Chad's College - Finance

Finance

The college has a modest endowment, which is enough to fund significant annual capital improvements, up to ten professorial fellowships and several dozen named scholarships. A private charity, as opposed to a public body, the college is ineligible for HEFCE (government) funding: around 12% of its income comes from charges to the University, a further 25% comes from research activities, with the rest raised through student fees, donations and conference income. The college is a registered charity. The college's turnover is £2.6 million, and total assets as of 2010 were £8 million (based on a deliberately conservative evaluation of the college's properties). In 2008, the college's previous Bursar, Mrs Christine Starkey, was jailed for fraud, for having stolen close to a half-million pounds, which would otherwise have been in the college's endowment. Mrs Starkey had deposited into the bank proceeds from the conference and B&B trade, but she failed to put these monies through the college's accounts. She then transferred the funds directly from the college's account to her own, hiding the transfers in bulk bank-to-bank BACS transfers. Starkey's house was sold and the college was eventually successful in recovering all of the money that had been stolen.