Head’s ‘£150,000 on staff credit card for lobster, hotels and a taxi for her luggage’
THE principal of a cash-strapped college is being investigated after spending £150,000 on her corporate credit card with five-star hotel stays and a taxi just for her luggage.
Stella Mbubaegbu, 63, splashed out on lobster at a leading restaurant and billed £434 headphones and a £219.99 dishwasher to the college while staff suffered wage freezes.
The head of Highbury College in Portsmouth spent more than £60,000 on exclusive hotels and more than £70,000 on travel, with first and business class flights and luxury cars including a Cadillac.
Ministers have now ordered the Further Education Commissioner to ‘urgently’ look at the credit card use. Lord Agnew, who oversees the commissioner, said he and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson were ‘deeply concerned’. He said: ‘School and college leaders must treat taxpayers’ money with the utmost care and in a way that benefits their students. Where this does not happen, we take the strongest possible action.’
Mrs Mbubaegbu’s lavish spending has been exposed by the journal FE Week, which obtained more than 500 receipts following a year-long freedom of information battle with the college. They cover the academic years 2014-15 to 2017-18.
The revelations come at a time of redundancies at the college, which axed its sixth form two months ago amid deteriorating finances and its Ofsted grade plunged from ‘outstanding’ to ‘requires improvement’.
The last time staff had a pay rise was in January 2013.
Minutes of a governors’ meeting in May reveal Mrs Mbubaegbu warned the 2019-20 budget would be the ‘hardest for years’ and there was a ‘limited safety net if cash ran out’.
The mother of three’s highest spend was for travel, with more than 30 flights – 17 of which cost over £1,000 – to places such as the US, Canada, India, Germany and Dubai. Landing at Heathrow on November 16, 2016, she paid £175 for a luxury car service to take her to the Hilton Birmingham Metropole, while another car firm picked up her luggage and took it back to her home in Hampshire.
Her expenditure on hotels enabled her to reach Hilton Diamond status – which typically requires 60 or more night bookings in a single year.
The hotels included four nights at the Portsmouth Marriott Hotel, which is less than a tenminute drive from the college and 20 minutes from her home. In July 2018, the principal spent £356 for a meal with three other guests at Quilon, a Michelin starred restaurant in London. The drinks bill alone cost more than £100 and the meal included a £45 lobster course.
Meanwhile, Highbury College’s accounts for 2017-18 show a deficit of £2.48million and state that its position has ‘deteriorated over the last three years’. Board minutes from May reveal that international and first
‘Generate income to survive’
class travel has now been restricted, along with a ban on alcoholic drink claims. A £2,000 limit has also been placed on the principal’s corporate card. In a statement, Mrs Mbubaegbu alleged the FE Week investigation claims’. expenses... authorised and She correctly... were unsubstantiated contained added: approved A sizable ‘exaggerated ‘ The and amount... the college was through reimbursed grants to or other funding.’ Hitting out at government cuts, Mrs Mbubaegbu, who was the first black female college principal and was awarded a CBE in 2008, said: ‘Chief executives of further education colleges have found ourselves under a extreme context fire pressure in in recent which to years generate there within is income to survive.
‘A sharp reduction in the number of income streams from the government over a number of years has led to us being encouraged to diversify our income, including international work in line with the international education strategy.’