Subscription rates

Two key elements must be considered when looking at the subscription rates:

1. In allocating costs to any given service or activity, a proportion of HESA overheads and indirect costs are allocated to that service or activity. We are unable to cost an activity as a marginal activity, meaning that every line of business is fully cost-reflective.

2. The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA) requires the distribution of costs between England and the rest of the UK to reflect the differences in services provided. England cannot subsidise other nations and other nations cannot subsidise England. This contributes to the subscription fees being different in each country.

Statutory Subscription Fees

The statutory subscription is mandatory and reflects the cost of completing the statutory requirements linked to your Statutory Subscriber type. In Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland this is a mandatory requirement. In England subscribing to HESA is one of the conditions of inclusion on the OfS register.

Further explanation about the differing costs across nations is available on ‘HESA Subscription – how we calculate our statutory fee’.

It is important to look at the combined total per provider, rather than just the per-provider or per-student fee. The two elements of the subscription need to be considered together.

Per-provider fee

Per-student fee

This is calculated on a six-monthly basis. The published figures are based on the student numbers available at the point of calculating the invoice. The current subscription period uses the ‘Student instance’ from the 2020/21 student data collections. For new providers, an estimate taken from the ‘Estimated Student Numbers Form’ submitted by the provider, is used.  

Graduate Outcomes

Please refer to the Graduate Outcomes Subscription page for the detail and rates of this element of your statutory subscription.

Aggregate Offshore record per-student fee

Providers who have offshore students, registered at their provider in the UK, and returned to HESA as a subset of the Aggregate Offshore collection will pay 50% of the per-student rate (for a given provider). 

The total Aggregate Offshore fee will be capped at £7,250 for each academic year, £3,625 for each subscription period, as invoiced.

Heidi Plus

Depending on your subscriber category Heidi Plus may be part of your statutory subscription or an optional service. Please see Heidi Plus Subscription for details.

VAT

The Statutory HESA Subscription is treated as a statutory requirement and as such falls outside the scope of VAT and no VAT will be applicable to the above charges. If this treatment changes VAT will be charged at the applicable rate.

Optional service rates, applicable in England and Northern Ireland

Services covered within the Optional Services Subscription relate to the following activities. This list may change over time.

Optional activities and services fall within the scope of VAT, which is charged at the standard rate of 20%.

Estates Management Record (EMR)

The below banded approach to participating in the EMR has been developed to align with the Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE) subscription approach.

Bands are based on turnover, and the assigned tier to your organisation by AUDE has been used to identify the appropriate subscription level for your organisation.

Reporting of Staff outside the statutory coverage of the Staff Record, in England

The cost of participating in this additional element of the Staff Collection are charged at a flat fee of £1,100 (exc. VAT).

If you are an English provider and have not yet opted to take part in either the Estates Management Record or the reporting of staff that fall outside of the statutory Staff collection a variation form can be submitted to opt-in to these collections.

Variation Form for Optional Services and Categories of Onward Use of Data (PDF)