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The University of Plymouth has seen its pre-tax profit leap to £7.1m and has begun recruiting staff again just two years after making huge losses and redundancies.

The institution’s freshly published accounts show its finances held up well despite what it described as “a uniquely challenging higher education landscape due to the continuing global pandemic”.

The report, for the 2020/21 financial year, shows its pre-tax surplus rose by £2.7m from the £4.4m profit in 2020.That in itself was a recovery from a loss of £17million a year earlier. Income also rose, to £239.4m, up by 5% on 2019/20’s £228m and close to the £241.5m it earned in 2019.

The turnaround in fortunes was put down to a number of factors including a £4.8m increase in research income and an increase in tuition fee income of £2.3m as a result of improved student retention and higher postgraduate student numbers.

There was also additional funding body income of £3.3m and savings of £2.9m - mainly due to events that did not take place as a result of Covid-19 including travel and education visits.

The receipt of £1.6m of Covid-19 capital and revenue funding from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) was, however, offset by the £0.7m reduction in residences, catering and conferences income due to reduced on-campus footfall, and a proportion of waived accommodation fees.

There were also additional staff costs of £3.6m, including: planned salary increases, an increase in holiday pay and a recruitment of 81 extra staff, including 54 research appointments. However, 38 staff did leave, costing the university a combined £539,000, a large proportion being in pension curtailment costs for highly-paid leavers..

But the return to recruitment comes two years after the huge losses were partly explained by the university having to pay £21.9m in “restructuring costs” associated with redundancy and pension payments for 566 staff who left during 2018 and 2019. A further 44 staff left in 2020, costing an additional £177,000.