Finance & Business Planning

It is a basic premise that the Model will be based on applying appropriately gathered activity data to the total staff costs of a group of staff within a defined Cost Centre. For this purpose, staff should be grouped by rank/grade within a natural unit (eg Sector Inspectors, BCU Detective Constables, Dogs section).

Activity data will be required for all staff delivering an operational activity whether based centrally or on BCUs and whether police or civilian. It is also important to be aware that the prime purpose is to cost activities and incidents, therefore chains of recharges are minimised and the 80:20 rule should be applied.

The Model will be used for both budgets and actual expenditure. When being applied to the budget, non-financial data (eg staff numbers) should therefore be those used in the formulation of the budget. When the Model is used for the analysis of actuals for the year, the financial data should be taken from the final outturn position and non-financial data should be based on the actual position for the year.

The aim is to produce costs that are summarised into the four operational Domains (Domains 1-4 see diagram in Executive Summary) for each BCU and for the force. Costings will contain three elements: Direct Costs, Business Support costs, and Sustaining Overhead costs (see Step-by-step Guide to the ABC Costing Process). The final result should be capable of being reconciled back to the 'Net Budget Requirement'. The summary statement to be completed at the force level is set out in Summary of Model.

The costing process is fully explained in Chapter 6 of the Manual of Guidance.