Imperial College London launches second round of academic pay reform

For Immediate Use
21 May 2002

Imperial College London today announces the second round of its initiative to pay enhanced salaries to academic staff.

From 1 October this year the bottom increment of the senior lecturer and reader scale will be abolished, making the new minimum £35,249 (from £34,158) and the maximum of the senior lecturer and reader scale will be increased by £1300 to £43,000. This new discretionary increment will be awarded for particularly meritorious performance.

Professors currently paid below £45,000 will be moved up to a new minimum salary point, and those paid between £45,000 and £50,000 will be reviewed so that, subject to good performance, their pay relativities will be adjusted in relation to those who have "caught them up".

All staff affected by this initiative will continue to benefit from any centrally agreed cost of living increases.

This follows the announcement last October of a radical change to academic salary scales, significantly improving pay for both lecturers and professors.

Chris Gosling, director of Human Resources said:

These changes continue the roll out of our policy to improve the recruitment and retention of high quality academic staff and place the College in the strongest possible position within the academic pay league. In particular we are keen to reward staff who did not benefit from last years initiatives.

The cost of these new measures will initially be borne centrally by the College as part of the additional funding received from HEFCE following the development of the Colleges Human Resources strategy. Future costs will be borne by departments and divisions.

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For more information contact:

Abigail Smith
Press Officer, Imperial College
Tel: +44 (0)20 7594 6701
Email: abigail.smith@imperial.ac.uk

Notes to editors:

1. On 26 October 2001 the College announced a new minimum salary for lecturers of £28,319 (from £20,267), and for professors of £42,500 (from £39,004), effective 1 October 2001. It also announced a further increase in the minimum salary of professors to £45,000 on 1 October 2002.

2. Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine is the largest applied science, technology and medicine university institution in the UK. It is consistently rated in the top three UK university institutions for research quality, with one of the largest annual turnovers (UKP390 million for 2000-01) and research incomes (UKP202 million for 2000-01). In the December 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, 75 per cent of staff achieved a 5* rating, the highest proportion in any UK university. Visit: www.ic.ac.uk