Striking lecturers attack 'waste' over the £1m grace and favour homes for vice-chancellors

Dons striking for a rise in cost of living allowances for the first time in their history yesterday accused universities of wasting millions of pounds by keeping "grace and favour" residences for their vice-chancellors.

The Association of University Teachers (AUT) staged a one-day strike in protest at the freezing for 10 years of the London weighting allowance for academics in the capital's older universities. The union says universities and colleges in London are sitting on tied houses – set aside for their vice-chancellors – worth more than £10m.

"I think the public would be amazed to learn that the same people who are telling university staff they can't have any more money to help them with housing have these incredibly desirable residences, given to them free," said Sally Hunt, general secretary of the AUT.

"These vice-chancellors, who have frozen London weighting for 10 years, don't have to worry about having a roof over their heads because they get these properties as perks of the job." At the top end is the "grace and favour" house set aside for Sir Richard Sykes, the Vice-Chancellor of Imperial College – which wants to charge students top-up fees of as much as £15,000 year. He has the use of a house in Queens Gate, near the Albert Hall, worth more than £1m.

Seven colleges are named by the union as setting aside property worth more than £1m – including King's College, where the vice-chancellor has a "spacious" penthouse flat on the top of what was the Public Record Office. Queen Mary College in east London has a property in Pier Head, Wapping, although it is used by the warden of its medical school because the vice-chancellor has his own London residence.

Other colleges are said to have properties worth less than £1m – including Goldsmiths, whose vice-chancellor, Ben Pimlott, has the option of a penthouse flat on top of Deptford Town Hall. He has a home in north London.

Ms Hunt said: "Many of the people who work so hard for these vice-chancellors' institutions are so poorly paid that they have to live in student-standard accommodation or rely on financial support from their relatives or partners."

A spokesman for King's College accused the union of hitting "below the belt. The flat is certainly not spacious," he said. Part had been sold by the vice-chancellor to raise funds for the college and the flat was worth much less than the £1m suggested by the union. A university source said of Imperial College: "If you want to attract people of the calibre of Sir Richard Sykes, you have to offer them an attractive package."

Four unions representing workers from porters to academics took part in yesterday's strike at universities established before the former polytechnics received university status in 1992.

Lecturers are paid an annual £2,134 allowance towards living costs – nearly £1,000 less than schoolteachers who will strike over allowances later this month, and £4,000 less than the Metropolitan Police. They want an allowance of £4,000.

Strikes also took place in the post-1992 universities and other higher education institutions in London and the Home Counties, where staff were awarded a 3.5 per cent rise.

* Cambridge broke ranks with other elite universities yesterday by expressing concern over top-up fees, which are being considered by the Government. A joint statement drafted by Sir Alec Broers, its Vice- Chancellor, and Paul Lewis, the president of the students' union, said the fees might reduce access to the university for poorer students.