I have heard of a new scheme called 'research leadership positions' that permanently releases very selected people from college duties. Apparently a few people already have them.
Is it true? Is it working?
This is only for very senior people and very few of them, junior people are stuck with endless college tutorials. Problem is the department and college do not coordinate, and college cares only about loads of admin and teaching (You can see it clearly in the job ads). This set up is not very appealing compared to the usual teaching reduction before tenure at any other reputable institution. (6 hours weekly tutorials, double admin, plus department teaching is way too much, more so for early career researchers).
Even if the econ department tries to be modern, recruit at the assistant prof level (which they do not, everything is associate, and they have this weird ad that says anything from out of the phd all the way up to very senior researchers), pay well (which they do not --at all-- compared to peers in the US or LSE), they still have to deal with the college bureaucracy, and lack of flexibility both by the college and central administration. All associate profs positions have to have both college and department teaching, and there does not seem to be any solution to this. And despite all this cons, even when they manage to get good people, they leave, not surprisingly due to the set up, but also because the lack of any counteroffers.
The only college that makes substantial top-up and has no undergrad teaching is Nuffield. And they still lose people, and fail to recruit at a high level (it is rare to see any prof from a top US econ department move to Nuffield, compared to LSE that does pay well their academics).