Cardiff University spends more than £10m on consultants in two years

Martin Shipton

Cardiff University has spent more than £10m on consultants over the last two years, according to figures released in a Freedom of Information Act disclosure.

A critic of the university’s ongoing cuts programme claimed that much of the spending on consultants had been caused by the cuts programme itself.

The website whatdotheyknow.com shows that a member of the public asked the university to “supply the names of all consultancy firms, freelance consultants, recruitment consultants and headhunters employed by the university since 1 August 2024, with the following information:

* What purpose were they employed for?

* What were they or are being paid for their work?

“Can this information please be broken down by academic year, i.e. 1 August
2024-31 July 2025, 1 August 2025-date.”

The university responded: “Please see enclosed spreadsheets. Please note some of the names of individuals have been redacted. Under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I am unable to provide a greater level of detail as the disclosure of information from which the individuals concerned may be identified would be unfair and a breach of the data protection principles.

“Please note we have removed any information from this spreadsheet that relates to external companies engaged in animal research. These are withheld under the qualified exemption in section 38 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.”

The spreadsheets show that in the academic year 2024-25, more than £2.6m was spent on “general consultancy”, plus more than £900k spent on temporary staff, around £950k on “professional services” and more than £86k on accountancy services.

In the year 2025-26, more than £2.8m has been spent on general consultancy, plus around £1.3m on temporary staff, around £930k on professional services and around £70k on accountancy services.

Among the companies listed under the heading “General Consultancy” for 2024-25, but without explanation of what work they had done for the university, were Argon International Solutions Ltd, £169,050; BIC Innovation Ltd, £63,576.40; Constellia Public Ltd, £109,383.99; Gameshift Ltd, £268,876.75; Gartner Ltd, £126,350; and Nous Group, £243,679,45.

The university also paid Nous Group £845,915.01 in 2025-26.

As we have previously reported, the Nous Group consultancy has been dubbed “Nousferatu” by critics in higher education internationally for the allegedly vampiric way that it is “extracting the lifeblood from universities”.

The consultants have become influential players in higher education markets in the UK, Australia, and Canada where the advice they sell to universities has often involved stripping back the democratic governance of institutions by academics, centralising control in the hands of Vice Chancellors, and cutting staff and courses.

academic source at the university who did not want to be named because of the fear of being victimised said: “These astronomical figures are an absolute scandal, and show just how much Cardiff University senior management are prepared to squander at a time when they keep telling us that the institution’s finances are in dire straits.

“The amount spent on temporary staff in the last few years is particularly galling given how many colleagues they’ve made redundant or who took voluntary severance. These figures show that senior managers have created a labour crisis at the university.

“What these figures reveal is just how expensive the business of saving money has become in Wales’ topsy turvy higher education system.

“The advice they offer is always the same: slashing frontline teaching and professional services staff, centralising power in the hands of senior managers, and investing top dollar in ever-more expensive tech ‘solutions’.

“The terrible thing is that this expensive advice is often just wrong, and requires yet more consultancy to sort it out, like we saw with the timetabling disaster last year.

“Conveniently, the cost-saving advice they offer is never about cutting bloated executive pay or mushrooming middle and senior management.”