The Independent Business Review (IBR) carried out by KPMG has been shared with Goldsmiths UCU. After giving the report careful attention, in this thread we can report the following headlines:

KPMG sees Goldsmiths as a successful institution that has increased its ‘market share’ over the last 5 years- they see opportunities for growth and revenue generation; Home/EU recruitment has slipped a bit​, but is compensated for by strong overseas & postgrad recruitment;

The report concurs with prior GUCU research that last year’s deficit (c.£8 million) is largely a result of high capital expenditure 2015-18, and increase in USS pension contributions that VCs refused to challenge;

The suspension of the Enterprise Hub and of non-critical capital expenditure (estates + IT) would save the College roughly £10 million;
if the College considered selling some of the estate at least another £7 million could be raised;

These savings alongside staff cost savings from VSS + redundancies of casualised staff comes to close to £20 million. This would cover the current deficit of £8 million, leaving £12 million for any funding gap that emerges post-Covid.
Will a loan even be necessary?

This Independent Business Review (IBR) was commissioned at a moment of great uncertainty, before the reforecast from this year was done, and before any actual loans were sought.

GUCU calls on SMT to:

Follow KPMG advice to address the deficit through suspending the Enterprise Hub and other capital expenditure in the short term;
Reassure staff that there will be no further redundancies;

SMT should:

Postpone any portfolio and service review until a time when we are not in the middle of a pandemic, so as to enable careful decision-making;
Open up the books- share the July 2020 end of year report and the now overdue October reforecast;

SMT should focus their time and resources now on keeping students, staff and our local community safe from Covid-19.

Spending time and resources on an unnecessary restructure as Covid cases are spreading on campus and in our community is inappropriate and irresponsible.