City of Glasgow College principal claims £100,000 in expenses

In addition to his position at the college, Dr Little is a strategic advisor to the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, chairman of business consulting firm EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) and the UK Chair of Shipbuilding Skills Task Force.

Data released this month from City of Glasgow College under the Freedom of Information Act asked for details of the accommodation and subsistence costs incurred by Paul Little between 2013 and 2023, details of the memberships, affiliations and accreditations purchased for Paul Little between 2013 and 2023, and details of the services purchased for Paul Little between 2013 and 2023.

These include expenses for support staff such as travel and accommodation.

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In 2013, £1724.40 was spent flying from Belfast to Edinburgh, then Frankfurt, Washington DC, Jacksonville, Newark and back to Edinburgh.

In 2015 the principal attended an eight week management course at Harvard Business School in Boston at a cost of £50,000 and £1096.09 was charged on travel expenses in March of that year for a Belfast-London-Boston flight.

In the same month £1867.73 was expensed as petty cash for overseas travel for Paul Little, £101 for 'travelling expenses' and £349.99 for subsistence.

The college said at the time that the cost of the course was met by a surplus from its commercial activities and not from public funds.

In 2018 Dr Little expensed £1,594.65 to fly to New York for Tartan Week. Further expenses for that trip included £6.20 on Pret a Manger sandwiches, £8.67 to a coffee shop at John F Kennedy airport and £5 for fast-track boarding at Gatwick Airport.

A membership to Priority Pass, a service offering access to airport lounges around the world, costing £339 was put on expenses on January 31, 2020.

In July of 2022 numerous expenses were lodged for a trip to London.

This included more than £2,000 for accommodation for staff at the Reform Club, a private members' club in St James of which Dr Little is a member. It's understood the membership fee is paid by the principal himself.

Further expenses charged included £20 to travel from the club to Paddington Station by taxi, a journey which would cost £2.70 on the tube, and £20.46 to travel from Euston Station to Reform Club which would also cost £2.70 on the Northern or Victoria lines.

From January 2013 to July 2023, expenses relating to accommodation, subsistence and entertainment at Reform Club totalled £13,162 and transport to and from the club £225.16.

The club is within walking distance of the Green Park, Charing Cross, Embankment and Piccadilly Circus tube stations.

The college said it does not hold a cost-benefit analysis for the costs. Lecturers at the college who are part of the EIS-FELA union were on strike for much of last year over plans to impose 100 compulsory redundancies on top of 75 voluntary ones to deal with a £6m budget shortfall.

The Scottish Government has withdrawn a £26 million uplift for colleges it had pledged in the 2023/24 budget.

Dr Little's salary in 2020/21 was nearly £170,000 and his total remuneration package came to around £215,000.

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It was revealed last year that City of Glasgow College had spent close to £1million of public money on PR, marketing, public affairs and events since 2018.

The college defended these expenses as being crucial to recruiting students.

Mr Little has also been criticised for taking over 20 overseas trips between 2018 and 2023, costing City of Glasgow College around £27,000.

As well as 22 overseas trips, he was also in London over 30 times between 2018 and 2023.

Other domestic locations included Windsor, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Portsmouth and Southampton.

The college also spent £32,439 on corporate development trips in 2022, including £7,884 on sending two staff to Indonesia.

A spokesperson for EIS said: "All employees within the public sector, including College Principals, should be held to the same standards of financial probity and transparency where public money is concerned.

"While it is, of course, correct that reasonable expenses incurred by employees in direct relation to their employment should be reimbursed, this is not something that should ever be abused.

"Looking at some of the items on this particular list – for example expense incurred at a Private Members’ Club in London – it is difficult to see how this is directly related to work at a college in Glasgow, nor how attendance at this type of venue is of direct benefit to the college, its students, or the wider public, particularly against a backdrop of fiscal constraint that has led to cuts to courses for students and staff redundancies in the sector.”

A City of Glasgow College spokesperson said: "These expenses have been in the public domain for over a year and have also been previously covered by the media. Colleges receive single year funding from the Scottish Funding Council and are unable to borrow or build up reserves, so it is completely misleading to try and connect how we invest our money from 11 years ago to five years ago or to last year.

“City of Glasgow College is a global player in professional and technological education with thousands of overseas students and partnerships all over the world which deliver direct, tangible benefits to our students. We generate valuable income from both overseas and UK contracts which provide invaluable work experience and direct employment opportunities for our students. Our Principal plays a pivotal role in successfully developing and maintaining these external partnerships and for a modest investment in travel expenses of around £5,000 per year, we have generated some £5 million each year over the past five years through these partnerships. 

“We have more than 100 international partnerships, spanning six continents across 26 countries, with some 4,000 full-time and part-time international students from 150 nationalities benefitting from our world-class provision and Super Campus in Glasgow. We train almost half of all the UK’s Merchant Navy officers, working closely with the Merchant UK Navy Training Board; and the world’s top 20 shipping companies, many of which have offices in London. These travel costs are very heavily offset by the substantial amounts of revenue being brought into the College.”