HESA Finance open data · UK higher education providers

Where each £1 of income goes

Expenditure per £1 of total income across the eight HESA spending activities, from academic departments and research to central administration and premises, plus capital investment. University of Reading is the benchmark on every view, against the sector and the mission groups you select.

Pension adjustments
Providers
Provider type
Cost view
Averages
Comparator groups (combine as many as you like)
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Summary

Reading per £1 of income

Spend per £1 of income

The £1 split

Each bar is £1 of income. What isn't spent is the surplus; a bar running past the £1 line is a deficit.

Distribution

Where Reading sits

Every provider in each comparator set, in pence per £1 of income. The tick on each row is that set's median.

Trend · same filters applied in every year

Academic delivery over time

Capital investment per £1 of income

Investment in estates and digital

Capital spend is outside the income and expenditure figures above. Buildings covers estates investment. Equipment and digital covers equipment and intangible assets such as software.

Provider table · pence per £1 of income

Every provider in the comparison

Click a column heading to sort. Group averages and the benchmark stay pinned at the top.

Method

Definitions and caveats

Income
Total income from HESA Table 1: tuition fees, funding body grants, research grants, other income, investment income, donations and endowments.
Spending activities
The eight activities follow HESA Table 8. Academic departments: teaching and departmental research (cost centres 101–145). Research grants & contracts: direct spend on externally funded projects (207). Academic services: library, central IT and computing, learning resources (201). Student support & facilities: bursaries, scholarships, exams and other general education (203) plus staff and student facilities such as careers, wellbeing, sport and the students' union (204). Central administration: central administration and services (202). Premises: estate running costs, repairs and maintenance, depreciation and estate finance costs (205). Residences & catering (206). Other expenditure (208, excluding the pension cost adjustment).
Cost type view
An optional regrouping that holds up better when universities code costs differently. Academic staff and professional & support staff are taken from every activity by contract type, so it doesn't matter whether services are run centrally or in schools; estates and accommodation staff sit in the estate line. Academic running costs are the non-staff costs of departments and research projects. Support running costs are the non-staff costs of central admin, academic services and student services (excluding bursaries). Estate is all premises costs plus residences and catering, net of residences and catering income, so it isn't affected by halls partnerships or outsourced facilities management. Student financial support is bursaries and scholarships. Other & one-off is HESA other expenditure plus restructuring costs. All lines are per £1 of core income: total income less accommodation and catering income, since that income mainly pays for accommodation. Lines plus surplus add up to £1.
Pension adjustments
The non-cash pension cost adjustment reported in Table 8 (USS, LGPS and similar provision movements). These swing year to year: Reading's was +£72.6m in 2021/22 and −£102.7m in 2023/24. They are excluded by default; switch to Included to match the audited accounts.
Surplus or deficit
Income minus expenditure (operating result before gains, losses, tax and joint ventures). The surplus and deficit filter uses this figure, so it follows the pension setting.
Capital investment
HESA Table 9 total actual capital spend, split into buildings and equipment plus intangible assets. Capital spend is lumpy, so the 3-year average divides three years of spend by three years of income.
Averages
Provider average gives each provider equal weight. Pooled £ adds up money across the group, so large providers dominate. The benchmark is always excluded from group and sector averages; medians appear on the distribution chart.
Mission groups
Memberships as at 2026, applied to every year. "Reading comparators" is a starting peer set of research-intensive universities outside the Russell Group; edit data/mission_groups.csv to change it.
Provider filters
By default the comparison includes providers with income of £100m or more that are publicly funded (funding council grants of at least 1% of income). Small, specialist, private and pathway providers often have very different cost structures. For example, some private providers spend more than 60p per £1 on central administration, which skews averages. Lower the minimum income or choose "All providers" to include them. The benchmark is always shown.
Coverage
Providers that joined later or haven't yet reported a year are missing from it; some sub-lines (e.g. research by funder, residences vs catering) aren't reported by every provider.
Institution detail tab
Breaks each of the eight activities into HESA Table 8 sub-lines and types of cost (staff, operating, depreciation, interest). Research cost recovery compares research grant income (Table 1) with research grant spend. Residences and catering are shown net of their income (Table 7). Gaps are differences in pence per £1 of income, so providers of different sizes compare fairly. The support envelope adds central administration, academic services, staff and student facilities and professional staff in academic departments, so it isn't affected by whether a university runs these services centrally or in its schools (bursaries are left out because they are passed to students). Ratio lines (e.g. professional staff cost per £1 of academic staff cost) use peer and sector medians, because a few specialist providers with almost no academic staff produce extreme ratios that would distort an average. Providers that don't report a breakdown are left out of that line's average.
Staffing tab
Managers and the non-academic occupation mix come from HESA Staff Table 1 (headcount by Standard Occupational Classification; providers that opted out of non-academic returns are excluded, and coding changed to SOC2020 in 2023/24). Academic staff grades, roles and contracts from HESA Staff Table 7 (headcount, excluding atypical staff): "professor" and "other senior academic" are HESA contract levels. Staff FTE, salaries and the number of staff earning over £100,000 come from HESA Finance Table 12 (2017/18 onwards). Salaries exclude employer pension and National Insurance. Medians are used throughout.
Source
HESA Higher Education Provider Data: Finance, Tables 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12 and 14 (2015/16 to 2024/25, last updated May 2026), and HESA Staff Tables 1 and 7 (February 2026). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. All money is in £ thousands at source.