11 August 2016 – Freedom of information request – Response to a range of questions about accounts including head counts

Request

1. Head count and total cost of civilian investigators. Broken down by PSD; other departments or units.
2. Head count and total staffing for Civil Disclosure Unit.
3. Head count and total staffing for Legal Services department.
4. Head count and total staffing for Communications Department.
5. Breakdown of Provisions (£529,000).
6. Breakdown of intra-group charges for Joint Corporate Services.
7. Details of all STA agreements entered into, and approved by the RCB.
8. Anonymised breakdown by individual officers of P11D Benefits in Kind showing type of benefit, value.
9. Details of all internal costings relating to Operations Rome and Hyson.
10. Copies of all supplier invoices relating to Operations Roome and Hyson. Specifically, to include Fox and Warren (now Weightmans). Simon Myerson QC and Hannah Lynch.
11. Details of provisions made for out-turn beyond 31.3.16 for Operation Hyson. To include any provision for costs and damages awards made against NYP. These may of course, be covered off in Q5 above.
12. Input tax arising from the Operation Hyson invoices of Weightmans, Mr Myerson and Miss Lynch has been reclaimed by NYPCC from HMRC. As the services of the three named suppliers were not provided to NYP or NYPCC (instead to nine individual claimants), there is a doubt as to the legitimacy of the reclaim of the tax applied to those invoices. Please provide copies of all internal/external correspondence with Mazars, HMRC concerning this issue.

Response

1. Civilian Investigator is a staff role which replaces a warranted police officer investigator, either to fill a vacancy or as part of a workforce modernisation process to maximise the efficient use of warranted officers. These roles operate across the force in a number of departments.

   Our financial systems are geared around departments and do not enable us to easily analyse salary costs according to role titles.

   Although I have commissioned extraction of this information it will take some time to do and so cannot be provided at this time. Answers to this question will follow.

2. The actual staffing costs coded to this unit during 2015/16 were £263.5k. The numbers of staff can vary during the year due to staff turnover and recruitment. These are all police staff costs. At 31 March 2016 the HR system showed 8.51 fte in this unit.
3. The actual staffing costs coded to this unit during 2015/16 were £439.2k. The numbers of staff can vary during the year due to staff turnover and recruitment. At 31 March 2016 the HR system showed 10.73 fte in this unit. These are all police staff costs.
4. The actual staffing costs coded to this unit during 2015/16 were £381.3k. The numbers of staff can vary during the year due to staff turnover and recruitment. At 31 March 2016 the HR system showed 9.00 fte in this unit. These are all police staff costs.
5. I am not able to identify the figure of £529,000 in the accounts.

   Note 25 in the accounts of the Police and Crime Commissioner and Note 14 in the accounts of the Chief Constable provide information about Provisions for future liabilities.

6. Note 5(c) in the accounts of the Police and Crime Commissioner and Note 4 (c) in the accounts of the Chief Constable provide information about charges from NYPCC to CCNY for Corporate Support Services. The charge in 2015/16 was £20,184k. This represents the expenditure of all the Corporate Support departments as incurred by NYPCC during the year:
   • Estates and Logistics
   • Information Communications Technology
   • Corporate Communications
   • Organisation and Development
   • Chief Executive Officers team
   • Finance
   • Joint Corporate Legal Services
   • Revenue Development Projects

   	£’000
   Corporate Support expenditure as per Note 5 (a)	19,413
   Adjusted for:
   Financial income (remains in the PCC’s own accounts). Total £1,546k as per Note 5(c) less transfer from provisions £547k	999
   Amounts charged to Corporate and Democratic Core (see face of CIES) and to Financing and Investment Income and Expenditure (Note 8a) in the PCC’s own accounts	(164)
   Year end technical adjustments	(64)
   	20,184

7. I have taken STA to mean Single Tender Action, and RCB to mean Regional Collaboration Board. The RCB does not approve STA’s for this force.
8. We do not make available any documents relating to the salary or personal details of any individuals, other than the information required to be published in the statutory accounts or disclosed as part of the transparency disclosures under the Specified Information Order please see the PCC website – https://www.northyorkshire-pfcc.gov.uk/taking-action/expenses-and-expenditure/senior-salaries-information/.

   Note 11(d) in the accounts of the Police and Crime Commissioner and Note 6 (d) in the accounts of the Chief Constable provide information about Benefits in Kind paid to Chief Officers.

   The figures provided in the draft accounts as currently published are the taxable amounts in relation to private use of police vehicles. Warranted Chief Officers are provided with vehicles for use for police purposes. Since they are always on call, they are also permitted to use these vehicles for private purposes.

9. Please note that some of the costs of any operation form part of normal police business (officer and staff salaries etc) and as such are not specifically identified within our finance system. The costs recorded against operations are the costs specifically identified as being in respect of that operation.

   We did not separately identify any costs against Operation Rome during 2015/16. As has been previously explained in response to FOI requests, a manual cost estimate for expenditure up to September 2014 was done as a one-off exercise to assist the decision making process about what action should be taken. The exercise has not been repeated since.

   Costs identified against Operation Hyson and charged to revenue during 2015/16 totalled £2.1k:

   	£’000
   Overtime	0.4
   Interpreter and translator	0.1
   Legal etc costs charged to revenue during 2015/16	1.6
   	2.1

   In addition a further £73.9k has been charged to provisions in respect of Operation Hyson.

10. I have taken Operation Roome to mean Operation Rome. No costs were coded against this operation during 2015/16.
    Operation Hyson:
    I have attached a file containing scans of all the relevant invoices.
    Download this file
    

    There a number of pages for each document. The first page of each has been numbered, and the numbers relate to the following tables.

11. 	£’000
    Provision brought forward	140.8
    Costs charged against the provision (as above)	(73.9)
    Transfer from revenue to the provision	153.9
    Provision at 31 March 2016	220.8

12. The services of the three named suppliers were supplied to the PCC and the CC who were taking the case in pursuit of their statutory duty to safeguard the health and welfare of employees and former employees, ensuring an efficient and effective workforce and to support victims. There is no doubt as to the legitimacy of the reclaim of VAT on the invoices.

In line with our approach to transparency, this response will be published alongside the Freedom of Information disclosure log at https://www.northyorkshire-pfcc.gov.uk/taking-action/freedom-of-information/foi-disclosure-log/ and https://northyorkshire.police.uk/access-to-information/foi-disclosure-log/.

Jane Palmer
Chief Constables Chief Finance Officer