Expenditure

Total expenditure of £1,394.7 million in 2024–25 was £67.5 million (5.1%) higher than the prior year, after adjusting the latter for the reversal of the USS pension provision.

Staff costs

Staff costs increased by £67.6 million (9.7%) year-on-year (2025: £767.7 million; 2024: £700.1 million). £20.9 million of this increase related to research grants and contracts and was externally funded.

Social security costs jumped £10.9 million (2025: £73.3 million; 2024: £62.4 million), partly as a result of the rise in employer’s National Insurance rate from April 2025. This compared to a year-on-year increase of £4.8 million in the previous year. The full-year impact of this will feed through into next year’s financial results.

The salary cost increase in 2024–25 over the prior year was £52.0 million (9.3%). The overall number of full-time equivalent staff grew by a net 3.3% last year (2025: 8,783; 2024: 8,501).

Most net growth last year was in Professional Services staff, with an additional 166 FTEs out of a total increase of 281 FTEs.

The additional staff in Professional Services were mainly in support of strategic initiatives, such as diversifying our overseas student intake and the creation of Imperial Lifelong Learning and our Global hubs, and major projects like the replacement of the main system supporting our finance and people processes. We have also been adding resource to our student counselling and mental health service.

Each year all staff receive an annual cost of living pay award increase (for 2024–25 it was 4%, costing £22.9 million), with some receiving incremental increases if they are not at the top of their pay band (costing £7.3 million in 2024–25), as well as equity awards made to address significant pay gaps and achievement awards marking sustained exceptional performance, costing a combined £3.9 million. The remaining staff cost increases are in respect of net new recruitment, internal promotions and reorganisations.

Academic, Research and Learning & Teaching staff make up 49% of the workforce in FTE terms and account for 56% of the staff cost.

Staff costs recorded in the financial statements only reflect the cost of staff employed directly by Imperial on permanent and fixed-term contracts. Agency staff costs are reported under other operating expenditure. These are used to fill vacancies in our establishment and to supplement our skill base from time to time. The combined cost of these increased by £3.9 million last year (2025: £19.7 million; 2024: £15.8 million).

Other operating expenditure

Other operating expenditure remained broadly the same as in the previous year (2025: £514.1 million; 2024: £515.4 million). Premises costs remain our largest category at 24% (2024: 30%) of other operating expenditure. Utilities are included within premises costs and, after years of related energy prices, it was a relief to see these come down. Combined with our more efficient boilers, utility costs fell by £28.1 million (2025: £31.1 million; 2024: £59.2 million). Of the offsetting increase in other operating expenditure, £10.8 million was on research grants and contracts (2025: £110.9 million; 2024: 100.1 million).

Gains on investments

Imperial has a portfolio of assets comprising equities, bonds, property and cash managed for long-term growth in a vehicle referred to as the Unitised Scheme (2025: £598.5 million; 2024: £595.2 million). £272.4 million of the assets are in respect of endowed funds, meaning their use is generally for specific purposes (2024: £235.2 million). The use of the remaining funds is at the discretion of fund holders across the university, mainly the President, and annual distributions support, for example, strategic initiatives and scholarships.

Overall, the assets within the Unitised Scheme again benefited from favourable market returns in 2024–25. Investment property assets fell in value by £5.3 million in the year (2025: £96.5 million; 2024: £101.8 million) but this was more than offset by a gain of £24.1 million on the remaining marketable assets.

The target for the Unitised Scheme is to deliver a total return (income plus capital gain) of at least CPI + 5% on a rolling ten-year basis. As at 31 July 2025 the ten years’ annualised return was 6.9% against a target of 8.5%. The management of the assets is largely outsourced to third parties, other than for the investment property assets. Usually, the capital is left in place in the Unitised Scheme for long-term growth. Exceptionally in 2024–25, £40.0 million was redeemed to help fund the acquisition of the Victoria Industrial Estate.

Not all the university’s investment property assets are managed within the Unitised Scheme. Those where there is deemed to be a more strategic connection with the core education and research mission are managed separately. The largest single investment within this portfolio is now the 9.6 acre Victoria Industrial Estate site at Old Oak that was acquired during the year for £115.9 million. The remainder are mainly residential assets, including key worker accommodation for our staff. The total value of the investment property assets outside of the Unitised Scheme as at July 31st 2025 was £269.0 million, which factors in a mark down of £3.6 million compared to fair values at the start of the year.

We also hold a small number of legacy assets that are no longer fit-forpurpose to support either the core academic mission or the requirements of the student accommodation portfolio going forwards. We dispose of such assets periodically and during 2024–25 we recognised a gain of £27.1 million related to such disposals.

Capital

We continue to invest in our physical and digital infrastructure to ensure we provide the quality of facilities required to support our world leading academic mission. The £110.8 million of investment in 2024–25 was lower than in the previous two years (2024: £168.2 million; 2023: £134.9 million) as major projects completed ahead of the next phase of commitment. The amount funded internally was also down in absolute terms (2025: £85.5 million; 2024: £125.7 million), though in percentage terms was broadly similar at 77% compared to 75% in the prior year. These percentages were both much higher than in the preceding years, highlighting how it is becoming increasingly challenging to secure external funding for capital projects.

The multi-year £201.6 million investment in the Faculty of Medicine’s estate was completed during 2024–25 with the final £8.6 million invested. The last major component was the Dr Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Building at our Hammersmith Hospital Life Sciences Campus, which was supported by his very generous donation and opened in June 2025. The refurbished building offers more than 3,500 square metres of cuttingedge research and teaching facilities and co-locates most of Imperial’s cardiac and respiratory specialists who had previously been dispersed across multiple sites.

During the year we moved over 1,200 of our Professional Services staff from South Kensington to White City to provide improved collaborative working space for them and to enable us to reconfigure office space at South Kensington for teaching. The first phase of this saw three additional lecture theatres available for the start of the 2025–26 academic year, with the remaining work due to complete in time for 2026-27 academic year. As part of this work, we will also be upgrading our Great Hall to allow more flexibility in the way it supports teaching and provide more student support space. The investment in this work in 2024–25, including the fit-out of the leased space at White City, was £19.2 million.

We continue to develop the infrastructure at our White City Deep Tech Campus. A new dedicated route for vehicles and cyclists was officially opened in October 2024 and the latest phase of work has seen the completion of the main arrival point to the campus, improving accessibility for pedestrians and wheelchair users and enhancing connectivity with the local area. Investment this year amounted to £16.8 million.

The other project worth highlighting is the replacement of the digital infrastructure, supporting our finance, people and research administration processes. The impact of the associated data-cleansing activity on the 2024–25 financial results has already been commented on. Our current system was first installed over 25 years ago and we are now moving to a cloud-based system. Integrations need to be built with several other systems to try and move us towards a single source of truth. The ongoing licence costs cannot be capitalised as we do not own the software, but some of the implementation costs can be and these came to £3.2 million in 2024–25. The bulk of the cost will be incurred next year ahead of a go-live in the 2026–27 academic year.

Cashflow

Cash from operations of £130.7 million was £49.6 million higher than in the previous year (2024: £81.1 million). The level of net operating cash is a key financial measure for us, and we target it as being at least 10% of income. We were closer to achieving this than in the prior year at 8.8% (2024: 6.1%), but it is important to understand the drivers to assess the sustainability of the improvement.

Internally we identify four main groups of activities and review the cash generation in each of them.

The Academic portfolio comprises our education and research activity. Net operating cash generation from this portfolio funds investment in the facilities and equipment needed to deliver the academic mission. Not all the net operating cash generated in a year is available for the latter, as some of it represents cash received in advance of related expenditure, for example for research awards or donations. Of the total £77 million net operating cash generated in the Academic portfolio, around £29 million was earmarked for future activity.

Imperial owns most of its student accommodation as well as other residential assets, such as key worker accommodation, and these are managed in the Residential portfolio. These deliver consistent net operating cash returns, though the first call on this cash is meeting the interest and repayments due on the debt used to finance much of the development. These debt service costs were £25.8 million in 2024–25 (2024: £26.2 million). The remainder is available to fund the maintenance required on the portfolio and invest in its future development.

The Innovation portfolio contains investments in facilities that support the incubation and growth of Imperial spin-out companies and the wider ecosystem of the WestTech London corridor, thereby amplifying Imperial’s academic mission. In this early phase of development these assets do not generate significant net operating cash, broadly breaking even in 2024–25.

The Unitised Scheme makes annual distributions to the core university at a set percentage of the scheme’s value. The early receipt of a £15.2 million payment related to a lease on a property held in the Unitised Scheme in lieu of an ongoing stream of receipts over the next five years boosted net cash generation in the Unitised Scheme. This cash remains within the Unitised Scheme.

As for the sustainability of this net operating cash improvement, we have started locking in energy prices further forward to help secure the level of utility costs. The one-off property related receipts brought forward cash receipts scheduled for later years, so cash from operations will inevitably fall as a result. The pre-funding for research awards was very high in 2024–25, for example with £9.8 million for the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein and £6.7 million from Rio Tinto. We expect net operating cash as a percentage of income to drop back in 2025–26 and are not forecasting it reaching 10% of income for at least the next few years.

The lower net outflows this year from both financing and investing activities meant that the cash position at the end of the year (including funds on short-term deposit) was very similar to that at the start (2025: £369.0 million; 2024: 364.3 million), despite the Victoria Industrial Estate acquisition and without any additional borrowing.

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