The following information is provided to meet the requirements under the HEFCE Financial Memorandum 2010 in respect of Higher Education Institutions as exempt charities, arising from HEFCE’s role as the principal regulator of HEIs as charities from 1 June 2010.
The University of Southampton is a Chartered Corporation, established by Royal Charter in 1952. The correspondence address is: University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton, SO17 1BJ
The Charter and Statutes of the University in force in 2009-10 are available from the University Calendar 2009-10.
During 2010 the University has undertaken a deregulation project , under which changes have been made to the University’s constitution by moving material previously contained in Statutes into Ordinances. As part of a separate but related project, amendments have also been made to the Charter, Statutes and Ordinances to reflect changes to the University’s internal organisational structures. The version of the University’s constitution in force in 2010-11, which reflects these changes, may be found from the University Calendar 2010-11.
The members of the Council of the University are also the charitable trustees of the University. A list of the trustees as at 31 January 2011 is available, together with information about other charities (if any) of which the trustees are also trustees. Download the list of trustees.
Further information about the Council, including biographical details of members, may be found from the Council web page.
The University’s financial statements for the year ending 31st July 2010 (and previous years) are available at the Finance website.
The financial statements contain further details of our governance arrangements, a listing of members of Council who served during the period covered by the financial statements, and a summary of the activities for public benefit of the University.
Footnote
In 2006 the Government set out principles which were designed to reduce what it considered to be unnecessary bureaucratic requirements on institutions of higher education in relation to changing their governing Charter and Statutes. The proposals were known as ‘deregulating governance arrangements’. Universities were offered the option to streamline parts of their decision-making processes by taking certain matters out of the jurisdiction of the Privy Council.
In 2006, Bill Rammell, then Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, wrote to institutions about how the Department envisaged reforms to university governance being put into practice, listing provisions which would not need Privy Council agreement. The University’s project has put this into effect for its own Charter and Statutes - Privy Council approval for the changes was received on 21 July 2010.