UCL Qatar housing support allowance for staff

UCL has clarified issues raised by media coverage this week of payments of housing support allowance to staff at UCL Qatar. This story followed the release to the Times last week, in response to a Freedom of Information request, of internal UCL correspondence on the issue of the housing support allowance paid to its staff at the university's branch campus in Qatar. This correspondence was from 2014, when the unintended consequence of housing provision arrangements was raised with us in relation to a 2011 contractual change for an individual member of staff. That unintended consequence was the payment of housing allowance to married women on the staff at a lower rate than might have been paid to married men. The policy was indirectly discriminatory on grounds of gender - all of the staff who were impacted by this (and were back paid) were women. The policy, following local Qatar practice, was clearly inconsistent with UCL's equalities standards and was changed in 2014. UCL sincerely regrets that this issue was not corrected sooner.