Publisher Oxford University Press has given 60 million pounds from its booming financial reserves to allow [help] the university to redevelop the Radcliffe Infirmary.
Oxford University paid 29 million pounds [more than 40 million pounds] for the 10.5 acre Radcliffe Infirmary site, although it is leasing [renting] it back to the NHS for at least four years until services are moved to the John Radcliffe site in Headington. The historic hospital, which already houses some university work, will be converted into research and teaching facilities, plus student accommodation. The Jericho Health Centre will also move there. The main hospital building, chapel, former out-patients building and wall along Woodstock Road, which make up the front courtyard of the hospital, all have a Grade II listing as historic buildings.
The 60 million pounds comes from a "property reserve fund" and not from OUP's growing profits - which are called a surplus because the publisher is a charity and does not pay tax in the UK and some other countries. In the last academic year, the Press paid 3.5 million pounds tax on a surplus of 61.9 million pounds, leaving a net surplus of 58 million pounds, up seven per cent from 46.6 million pounds in 2002.
[The company lost a court case in India over its charitable status, which accounts for a large part of its tax payments.]
Following controversy about its tax-exempt status [in Britain], OUP has increased the amount it gives to the university.
As well as the hospital gift, a one-off donation has gone to the Bodleian Library, and the annual donation was increased to 14.8 million pounds, making a total donation of 76.8 million pounds. From next year, OUP has promised to transfer at least 12 million pounds a year to the university.
[On March 31, OUP still had 198 million pounds in its trading operations account, and it earned 14.1 million pounds from property it owns. Sales for the year totalled 392 million pounds, which would have been higher had it not been for a fall in the value of the pound. The education division improved its market share in secondary schools and out-performed other puiblishers in a depressed primary market.]
Chief executive Henry Reece said OUP's development of Internet-based learning materials had been hit by the UK schools funding crisis.
[He said: "For a school that cannot afford to pay its teachers, repair its buildings or buy books, the availability of online materials is hardly a priority. We must hope that this is a temporary state of affairs."]