Professional HE Services (PHES)

Professional HE Services (PHES) is an umbrella company for membership organisations in Higher Education. PHES is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee and is owned entirely by its member H E institutions.

PHES is a shared service that provides the legal framework for different H E associations to be run efficiently and share staff and operational resources. There are currently nine sector associations under the PHES 'umbrella':

• ACOP - UUK/GuildHE Accommodation Code of Practice
• AUDE - Association of University Directors of Estates
• AULP - Association of University Legal Practitioners
• BUFDG - representing H E finance staff
• CUBO - College & University Business Officers
• CHEIA - Council for Higher Education Internal Audit)
• HESPA - Higher Education Strategic Planners Association
• SCHOMS - the association for media services and learning technologies staff in universities
• UHR - Universities Human Resources

Each association has complete autonomy to run its finances within the financial sustainability rules set out in the PHES agreement. Each organisation has its own structure and terms of reference and is run by its own Executive Committee.

Benefits of PHES

There are many benefits to H E membership associations being part of PHES, which in turn benefit their member institutions:

• The shared legal framework and terms of reference ensure each member association does not have to go through the expensive process of establishing their own separate, legal entity.
• The shared accounting and governance services through the PHES Board are a considerable efficiency saving over each association contracting separately with, or employing, an accounting function.
• The shared staff resources offer considerable savings to all associations and to the university members, particularly around the collection of subscription fees, where the subscriptions of all organisations are collected on the same invoice.
• The database and Content Management System form the 'engine' that runs behind all organisational websites. This provides significant savings as each association does not have to establish and pay for its own website development, and improvements to one can be shared. Each organisation can also help the others in keeping the institutional and individual data up to date, and members only require one login across all websites.
• Collaboration between the different associations and between the staff of the professional services areas that they support within universities and higher education providers, as well as joint projects covering more than one of the professional services etc.

Governance

PHES is managed by an Executive Board supported by a Managing Director:

• Gill Ball 
• Melvyn Keen
• Kim Frost
• Dominic Fryer (Managing Director)

The Directors delegate responsibility for day-to-day management of the associations to the most senior member of staff working on behalf of that association. 

Find out more

You can find out more about PHES by visiting the PHES website. You can find out about the PHES team on the webpage about our staff.

Should you have any questions about PHES, please contact Dominic Fryer.