What services does the council recharge from support services to service departments? For each below, please indicate each of the following: yes it is recharged or no it is not recharged; whether it is done by allocation, apportionment or SLA-based charge; in each case what is the basis of apportionment (where relevant) (e.g. headcount, gross expenditure, hours, or whatever?
| Service | Recharged or not recharged |
| Accountancy – financial accounting | Not recharged |
| Accountancy- management accounting | Not recharged |
| Internal audit | Not recharged |
| Payroll | Not recharged |
| Creditors | Not recharged |
| Sundry debtors | Not recharged |
| Insurance | Not recharged |
| Risk management | Not recharged |
| Procurement | Not recharged |
| HR – training | Not recharged |
| HR – support & advice | Not recharged |
| Legal | Not recharged |
| Property – occupation of property incl cleaning etc cleaning? | Not recharged |
| Property – professional services e.g. architects | Recharged – set percentage of total cost of works commissioned |
| IT – help desk | Not recharged |
| IT – systems development | Not recharged |
|
IToperations
|
Not recharged |
| IT – infrastructure | Recharged- additional new devices such as laptops provided to customers recharged at cost |
| Telephones | Not recharged |
Are there any other support services subject to recharge? If so, what and please supply the information above
Additional services that are recharged are:
· Land Registry searches (based on actual usage and cost)
· Grounds maintenance (based on actual usage and cost)
· Temp Bank / Agency staff (based on actual usage and cost + mark-up)
· Recruitment Advertising (based on actual usage and cost + mark-up)
· Private Finance Initiative (to 6 specific schools only based on the affordability model)
Do recharges include recharges to I) trading units, ii) Capital, iii) Schools iv) Corporate and democratic core v) Non-distributed costs, and vi) Other legal entities such as subsidiary companies?
Where services in question (1) are shown as not having been recharged, please note that this relates to Corporately funded services only and so does not include grant funded projects, externally funded services (i.e. investments / pensions), traded services, and schools where recharges are still raised.
Does the system for recharging trading units or other entities differ from that for traditional services? If so, how?
Yes. Very limited recharging takes place to Corporately funded (traditional) services as budget for support services was centralised in 2010.
Are recharges made to services at service level as per SeRCOP or to lower subdivisions of service?
Recharges where applicable are generally made at lower service divisions
Do services receive and can they readily identify recharges for different support services or are they aggregated? If aggregated, to what extent are they aggregated? Please supply an example of a periodic report made to a service department on the financial performance showing the support service recharge
Where applicable, Services receive internally generated invoices showing the value and detail of the charge.
Are any support service costs pooled before recharging (e.g. property – are services recharged on the basis of buildings that they actually occupy or are all properties pooled and recharged based on averages)?
Where services are recharged to grant funded projects etc. they are done on the latest available actual data.
When was the data used to carry out apportionments last updated?
This varies by the type of service being recharge
Is the same apportionment basis applied for all service departments?
The same apportionment of a service is used for all applicable customers.
What is done to cater for recharges for support services where activity levels in support of an individual service may vary markedly from year to year (e.g. internal audit or legal)?
Unless a SLA (service level agreement) with a set cost has been signed then actuals would be recharged.
Do all support services net to zero at the end of the annual process
No because budgets for support services were centralised in 2010 (with the exception of grant funded projects, externally funded services (i.e. investments / pensions), traded services, and schools)
Do support services recharge other support services?
No
If yes to 11 above, is the resulting balance left to stand or redistributed in a subsequent recharge iteration?
Not applicable
Are recharges above or below the line (i.e. are budgets for recharges allocated at the start of the year with managers being held accountable in some way for the recharges that their services receive or is it an exercise completely outside routine budgetary reporting to services)?
Where applicable they are above the line.
How many times per year is the recharging process run? For example, annually in period 13 or later, annually in period 12, twice annually, or other intervals
This varies by the type of service being recharged.
Are services communicated with regarding the basis of and likely levels of recharges during the year?
Yes
Is the recharging exercise essentially manual or automated? Is it carried out on spreadsheets or by the council’s financial information system?
All recharges go through the Council’s financial system. Feeder systems are also utilised for high volume services i.e. the Temp Bank.