Activity Based Costings
Guide
The Activity Based Costing Team within Business Improvement Division - 2006/7
Technical Annexes
Quotes
| ABC = Measurement + Control |
|---|
A few quotes -
"You can only control that which you can measure; the degree of control is determined by the quality of the measurement"
Frederick Taylor
"I kept six honest serving men,
They taught me all I knew,
Their names are,
What, and why, and when,
And where, and how, and who"
Rudyard Kipling
"Activity Based Costing is 30% understanding and using techniques correctly, and 70% the ability to convince others to accept beneficial change. No matter how brilliant the measurement, if people reject it, nothing has been achieved and the analyst has failed."
Ralf Sorenson (Head of SIS Airlines)
"There can be little doubt that a company will be prosperous if every individual in the company knows his time and talents are being used, as efficiently as work-study techniques can make possible."
HRH The Duke of Edinburgh
Why use ABC?
The decision to use ABC - Internal pressures
Equitable distribution of scarce resource - those who shout loudest got most. Inbalances of resourcing created a culture of 'fat cats versus the rest', which in turn caused unrest throughout the service. Addressing this was a prime motivation for the introduction of ABC.
Helping managers to manage. You cannot cut costs unless you know what your costs are. Equally, the good manager needs to know the cost of what is being managed.
The decision to use ABC - External pressures
CPS, as a responsible public organisation, must have tight control of running costs at a time when resources provided by central government are strictly limited. This is unimpeachable economic sense and is an absolute requirement of any responsible public body.
The Treasury is always looking for reductions in Civil Service expenditure. This has usually been around 3% year-on-year, but in reality is always more compared to the previous year, due to inflationary increases eg salary 'experience' increments.
CPS costs rising against falling/static Caseload (NB not workload). In the early 1990's, for example, CPS expenditure was increasing, in real terms, by around 6% a year, whilst at the same time caseload was gently declining. Less cases perhaps, but was there more to do on each of them?
Law Officers (the Attorney & Solicitor General) raised concern about costs rising (increasing staffing levels) versus falling caseload. CPS argued that greater case complexity and additional tasks (such as new rules on disclosure) accounted for rising costs, but, without ABC, were never able to prove it.
Increased emphasis on establishing wider CJS costs and models with numerous projects aimed at costing impacts across the various CJS agencies. Consequently, it is important for the CPS to know its contribution to the larger CJS picture and furthermore to be able to assess resource impacts of cross CJS initiatives.
Changes in criminal legislation and developing case law, which continues to grow in complexity, has significant impacts on our use of resources. The provisions on disclosure under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations bill, for example, increased the workload of prosecutors and caseworkers and cost CPS between 6m and 7m per annum in (at the time unrecognised) additional work. CPS assuming responsibility for Charging and the introduction of the COMPASS case management IT system, for example, also require costs attention.
How efficient are we? - openness and external accountability. We spend taxpayer money. Do we spend it wisely? If we don't say so, nobody else will.
How much do we cost? MPs enquiries can be difficult to answer - What is the cost of a motoring offence, a youth case etc? How do we answer academic requests for information that.
The Guide
This guide is intended to answer the most common questions about ABC and should enable you to develop and understanding of the power and effectiveness of the CPS Activity Based Management system and its importance in the provision of accurate resources to all CPS Areas.
This guide is not intended as a detailed explanation of the theory behind Activity Based Costing or Activity Based Management, as many publications from the academic and business worlds cover these subjects in great depth. The aim is to provide a simple overview of how and why the CPS has used and adapted ABC to address its own particular needs.
The Guide also focusses on how ABC Timings are developed and their role within ABC models. If more detail on the Corporate Information System (CIS) and how ABC models are produced is required, this can be found in the CIS Guide under "External Library" on the main CIS menu.
Importantly, any system such as this requires continuous maintenance to reflect changes in process, procedure and legislation. As such, although the material produced within this Guide is accurate as at January 2006, ongoing maintenance may well mean that elements of the system are subject to change during the currency of this Guide.
Development of the ABC system in CPS is overseen by an ABC Steering Group who along with the ABC Team and Area Resources Branch are responsible for the ongoing refinement and maintenance of the system in partnership with CPS Areas and other CJS Agencies. Resource allocation based on activity costs is now in place for the 11th year of the services history.
What is Activity Based Costing?
Activity Based Costing (ABC) is exactly what it says it is, namely costing based on activity, be that of a person, team or an organisation. ABC can measure and ultimately cost the activity of all those working within an organisation. This in turn provides invaluable data to support any planning, monitoring and control system, enabling managers to make better and more informed business decisions.
If you cannot measure a task, you cannot manage it or, more importantly, improve it.
We are all involved in costing activities every day of our lives although we may not always realise it. When we pay for goods in a shop, we are completing a complex costing transaction that helps the manufacturer pay wages, heating, lighting rent, VAT, taxation and so on. Another portion of the payment goes to the upkeep of the shop we bought the goods in to pay salaries and support their continuance in the market place. Further elements will cover profit and possibly some shareholder dividend.
Pricing is a complex business involving a large number of people but the bottom line is always that the sale price has to be greater than the price of production.
Anyone selling lower than the cost of production will rapidly go out of business. This is why manufacturers know the price of every single part of their production process.
In the same way, faced with a wages bill of tens of billions of pounds, Government should also know the true cost of its 'product' at every stage, so that it can truthfully demonstrate its efficiency around election time and prove that it is making best use of that most precious commodity - taxpayers money.
For CPS, ABC means in-depth measurement of the CPS/CJS processes and timings attributed to those processes to ensure equitable and fair resource distribution for all its business units.
A (true) ABC story from years past!
One day, in a busy CPS unit not so far away, there worked a very bright and intelligent A1 who did all file registration duties for her unit. Because her immediate line manager was very, very busy with very important Crown Court files, this bright and intelligent A1 was left to her own devices most working days and did pretty much what she wanted.
Nobody bothered to look at her outputs, monitor her productivity or even thank her if she had worked particularly hard, as she often did. Neither did her manager know how long her job should take, or check that it was being done within that time.
As the days rolled on, the very bright and intelligent A1 became bored, particularly by unremitting registration duties, with no other outlet for her energies. So, for interest, she read the files she was registering. She read police statements and she read previous convictions and she read mail and she read faxes, with the result that case registration was taking her an average 15 minutes per case, rather than the normal 5 minutes, or so.
One day, inevitably, registration files backlogged, and the first people to notice were the A2s in the unit who suddenly had no cases to work on. So, on their own initiative, they pitched in with registration until it was clear. But all this did was swamp the A2s with new work and leave the A1 with nothing much to do.
At this point, her line manager finally got involved and, with an imperfect understanding of the situation, arranged additional A2s, borrowed from another Branch at great cost, to clear the backlog of A2 work.
Knowing how long a job takes would have made this boss a better manager and would also ultimately have helped to save money. The A1 left the service and cited 'boredom' as the cause of her exit.
Number of files handled * staff time = the cost of prosecution
What is an Activity based Cost?
CPS is not alone in using ABC. Most government agencies, particularly the bigger ones, use some form of ABC measurement, as do major companies, manufacturers, insurance companies, banks, building societies, airlines, universities, and so on.
The techniques of ABC are used all over the world wherever there is a work process to be measured or a cost to be determined.
Activity Based Cost Management identifies the factors that drive costs in organisations. It also measures and analyses costs in a way that helps managers understand better what influences their core business. It also helps them to exert control in achieving objectives.
An activity cost is simply a measure of the amount of resource used to undertake a specific element of work.
The broad concept of activity costs within CPS is that the number of files handled, multiplied by staff time, is equal to the total cost of staff time spent on the CPS prosecution process. The system is built purely on staff time and excludes accommodation and other ancillary costs, eg Capital.
ABC does not replace performance indicators but illuminates them to make their messages more meaningful. Indicators on their own are rather like the controls in a car which tell you how many revs and what speed you are doing, but not if you are a good driver or are respecting the speed limit.
After all, the simple cost of a case can always be determined by dividing expenditure by caseload but this tells you nothing about the efficiency or quality of the product or how the organisation is running, only how much the case costs on average.
When you want this information, this is where ABC comes in.
How does CPS use ABC - Distribution v Determination?
ABC measurement was introduced primarily to address the need for a fair and equitable allocation of running cost budgets to Areas. In-balances of staff distribution were common knowledge within CPS with many believing that those who shouted loudest got most, with other areas being disadvantaged. Use of ABC data offered the opportunity to distribute funds within CPS based on need rather than precedent.
So, ABC, within the CPS, is used as a resource distribution system, rather than a resource determination system. This means that the core prosecution process on the majority of cases in CPS Areas is measured in ABC. However, the work in other parts of CPS outside Areas is not covered by ABC models.
In contrast, a proper resource determination system attempts to capture all activity and attribute costs to all activities/functions within an organisation. In this way the overall cost of an organisation meeting its objectives and obligations can be assessed but this will generally require more ABC personnel and a much greater level of maintenance or updating.
How does ABC distribution work?
In simple terms, an ABC staff profile is calculated for each Area. This staff profile is calculated by multiplying the ABC times to deal with different types of case by the number of those cases dealt with in each Area. The total time required tells us how many staff at different levels is needed (as we know how many minutes equals one member of staff). The number of staff is then converted into costs by applying the average salary costs in each Area. So for each Area we can calculate a total ABC cost based on its caseload and case mix.
Aggregating these results from all the CPS Areas provides a National ABC cost. We can then determine what proportion of the National ABC cost is appropriate to each Area based on its ABC share. At this stage each Area's ABC percentage share is applied to the actual funding available. For example, if Area A's ABC share of the National ABC is 5%, then it will receive 5% of the available funding.
This principle can also be applied when assessing the balance of staffing between different Business Units in Areas or if your Area is planning a restructuring exercise and seeks some indication of how to distribute existing staff, bearing in mind that there is also non ABC funding from other CJS sources. An easy-to-use Excel based package has been developed for this task and along with appropriate training, is available from the ABC Team contacts at the end of this Guide.
What does ABC cover and where is it used?
ABC currently focuses on the core prosecution process work undertaken in CPS Areas by both legal and administrative staff in levels A1 to D, excluding Area Secretariats. Designated Caseworker activity is included within the timings but Higher Courts Advocates are excluded as they are funded via other means at present. ABC does not cover work in National HQs, Business Support Centres, CPS Direct or the Central Casework Divisions dealing with Complex, Serious and Organised Crime (Casework Directorate).
Moreover, it deals only with payroll costs incurred by the Service and does not currently encompass prosecution costs ie counsel fees, other general administrative or capital expenditure. Also ABC does not cover what is called "non baseline" funding provided for specific purposes or projects from other CJS sources.
ABC modeling allows for comparison to be made between calculated costs and the actual time and cost required to carry out the CPS caseload. It also produces a profile of the staff required by level for each Unit or Area. Existing staff-in-post figures, including agency staff paid locally or lawyer-agents can be set against this profile for management information purposes.
In addition, ABC data is used by the Home Office in their influential 'Costs and Flows' and 'HEDRA' models to inform the Home Secretary and Government in general, of the true impact of legislative changes on the cost of the criminal justice system.
It also provides support to many initiatives within and beyond the bounds of CPS, particularly in terms of business cases and benefits realisation for many of the CPS change projects eg Compass, No Witness No Justice, Charging and the Disclosure Project. Members of the team also work closely with Policy colleagues in assessing impacts of new procedures arising from policy change.
In the past, ABC has included costing aspects of the "Levene", "Narey", "Glidewell" and "Auld" reports and the development of new approaches to Information Technology within CPS. ABC data has also informed joint approaches to closer working with the Police, especially on Charging, and "Glidewell", including information back to the Police about the cost impacts of poor quality Police files on themselves and CPS.
Chart showing key stages in building an ABC cost
The following charts show the key stages in building an Activity Cost, followed by further details on some of the important elements.
Caseload finalisations are important
Although there are various techniques to measure and quantify work, an equally important element in the ABC system are Case finalisations which act as Volume Counts, and tell us how many cases have been completed. Knowing how long or how much money a case takes to finalise is useful but unless we know how many of them we have done in the past or will do in future, the information has limited use. In the ABC system, timings have been measured for types of case that Areas routinely count as part of the standard Performance Indicators package. The counts relate to the different types of CASE OUTCOME in both magistrates' and Crown Courts. The full list of ABC costs for each case outcome is listed in Annex 4 of this guide.
Why is it important to accurately record all cases dealt with?
The key factor in determining an Area's ABC share is its caseload and case mix, and so it is very important that all staff members are properly trained and aware of the need to correctly finalise all cases. Failure to do so means a reduced ABC share and a likelihood of less staff budget for the Area in future years.
Failure to do this could have an adverse impact of the future resources for your Area!
How can we ensure that we correctly record our caseload?
- Make all staff aware of the importance of recording case finalisations with regard to budgets / staff;
- Ensure that staff responsible for recording case finalisations are appropriately trained;
- Ensure that training needs are monitored with regard to case finalisations, especially when new procedures/policies mean that changes may occur;
- Regularly review your Area's system for ensuring that cases are finalised to reduce the risk of cases being overlooked;
- If co-located, ensure that you are not wholly reliant on Police staff for caseload finalisation accuracy;
- Keep caseload finalisations under review - identify trends or anomalies at an early stage, investigate and question.
Some common problem areas
- Pre Charge Decisions and Consultations
- Specified offences
- Other proceedings
- Guilty verdicts as opposed to Guilty pleas
- Late finalisation of Crown Court cases
Remember - as few as 30 missed Crown Court finalisations each year can equate to a B1 caseworker in your ABC profile!
How does ABC measure work elements?
Most people walking into a work situation would not know where to begin to convert what they see into facts and figures. The ABC team can and does exactly that because they have been trained to do it. Work-study and Measurement is a professional qualification and ABC Team members are accredited by the Institute of Management Services. They have also worked in a various other organisations to develop their skills and experience.
The foundation of ABC is in-depth analysis of cases across a sample of Areas to examine the prosecution process as it really is. The starting point is construction of workflow process charts showing the work steps for each part of the process, and who completes the task, followed by calculation of how long on average, would be required for completion of each part of the task by a suitably motivated worker adhering to a specified method. The timing of the work steps is done in various ways:
- Analytical estimation, where experienced lawyers and caseworkers provided estimates based on their own experience of time required for actions such as review and court attendance.
- Observation, which is timing and activity sampling undertaken by the team to validate estimates, particularly court times.
- Self record logging by members of staff involved in the process.
- Comparative estimation where a new work task is compared to one already timed where there is similar work content and then allocated a time accordingly.
- Occasional use of Predetermined Data Administrative Systems (PADS) which are internationally accepted timings for basic actions such as reading, writing and other clerical tasks. (ABC Team members are licensed to use this system)
There are also certain aspects of prosecution that cannot be anticipated, such as interruptions, or telephone calls but which are legitimate and necessary parts of the process. These are dealt with by additional allowances added to the basic times. Details of these allowances are covered later in the Guide.
How does ABC measure considerative work?
Considerative work and reading time represents the highest proportion of time spent by prosecutors and counsel working on CPS case files.
There are a number of ways to accurately estimate average considerative time, although no method guarantees observed measured exactness:
- Estimation by an experienced prosecutor
- Estimation by focus groups
- Self-record logs
- PADS measurement
- Combination of all above approaches
An experienced lawyer examines completed cases and estimates the consideration time for each element of the case over the range of case types, based on their personal approaches ("I would need 30 minutes to deal with this aspect", and so on).
A group of experienced lawyers examine completed cases and argue towards an agreed estimate of the consideration time required for each element of the case over the range of case types, based on their personal experience and approaches.
A self-record log is attached to each file and prosecutors enter timings appropriate to each considerative action undertaken. Results from this approach can be later tested by activity sampling.
Occasionally for certain low-level repetitive considerative duties, such as review of simple 'Guilty Summary' cases or the reading of short letters or papers consideration times can be estimated by using PADS reading times, doubled to allow for initial read, followed by re-read for fuller comprehension.
The most effective method, adopted by the ABC team, is to combine the above approaches to determine an effective average timing per case type.
Predominantly, we use methods a) and b) as these enable a consistent approach to be taken through training and preparation of participating prosecutors.
Why does ABC sample and analyse cases?
ABC timings are partially based on a continuous and rolling sample of finalised cases analysed in CPS Areas. With over 1.5m CPS cases per year finalised, investigating data from the whole sample is obviously impossible, although future analysis may well be informed by data within CMS. To overcome this difficulty, sampling methods are used, and conclusions drawn from the sample to support the Activity Timing system, currently housed within Excel spreadsheets.
Currently, the main source of information from cases comes from finalised paper based case files but we also use any available statistical records, local monitoring data and also any data collected by other agencies eg DCA data on Crown Court hearings - types and durations.
With the introduction of the CPS Compass case management system and increasing use of IT to store and manage case file material, sampling will gradually move to the electronic file as more and more information is held there. The benefits of sampling include quicker results, more skilled analysis and lower collection costs.
So why analyse cases at all?
Quite simply, file analysis is the best way to establish how often different actions took place on different types of case. These are known as frequencies and are a key element in determining the work effort (time) and therefore, cost of dealing with different types of case. For example, we may establish the time required issuing a letter but it is far more useful to know how many letters on average are dispatched for each type of case. Similarly the overall time required for a case will depend on the occurrence of many different activities and by sampling case files we can establish what percentage of cases have a particular action on them and how often it occurs.
Frequencies can occur at many different levels in the process, from the number of words to be copied or read from a document to the number of court adjournments on a case. The ABC Team regularly update data on key or what we call sensitive frequencies, i.e. those which have the greatest impact on the overall time per case eg the number of court hearings for each type of case.
What is Relaxation Allowance?
Timing individual tasks will not ensure that CPS has the correct number of staff. To ensure accuracy, and a more realistic assessment, a number of allowances are added to timings to achieve adequate resourcing.
One key element in the welfare of staff at all levels within the workplace (CPS or wherever) is that performance must be accompanied by regular periods of rest, recovery and refreshment. This is to allow appropriate recovery from work effort and adequate rest to ensure good performance after the rest period. If these are not taken, performance often suffers. Only machines work all the time and those that work all the time often break down.
Rest Allowance rates can vary from organisation to organisation, and this is often dependant on the type of work being measured and how physically and mentally debilitating it can be. The rate may also be dependant upon the predominant method of measurement where timings based on "looser" methods such as self record or estimating will use a lower rest allowance rate than other organisations where the measurement methods such as pre determined timing data or observer based recording are "tighter".
At present, the CPS ABC timings include a relaxation allowance set at a 5% enhancement to the basic timings. The overall impact of these allowances is a further enhancement of ABC timings to ensure that staffing levels are commensurate with the prosecution process while allowing regular breaks for all staff.
What is Indirect Work?
The situation is a familiar one. It's lunchtime, the office is deserted and a phone rings at the far end of the room. It's not your phone but you get up, stop what you are doing, walk over and answer it. You answer the query. After a 5-minute chat that sorts the whole situation out, you put the phone down, scribble a note for the absent colleague and return to your desk to carry on with what you were doing before you were interrupted.
Although this is a simple sequence of events, the complete transaction could have taken as long as 10 minutes, with the interruption adding to the time taken to do your own job.
This additional time is called Indirect Work and these activities are legitimate work-related tasks which support the core process but which occur only occasionally or which are difficult to anticipate or plan.
There are numerous examples of Indirect Work every day within CPS, at all levels - telephone calls, e-mails, case related discussion, meetings, staff appraisal action, giving and receiving advice to each other. All are proper working activities that cannot generally be anticipated or placed precisely within a process chart. A distinction is made between personal telephone calls or non-work related discussions, which are classed as personal time and are deemed to fall within Rest Allowance.
ABC must accurately capture the impact of these interruptions to provide realistic assessments of resources required to do the job. This is done through a measurement process known as Activity Sampling and the results produce allowances, which enhance basic ABC timings to reflect time any spent legitimately on interruptions.
What is the Absence Factor?
Activity Cost Timings are calculated on the basis of 100% attendance at work by staff. Obviously, there are occasions when staff are not in attendance and allowance has to be made for these within ABC. In simple terms, we know that ABC may indicate that 4 people are needed to do a particular job, but the combined impacts of annual leave, sickness and training courses can reduce attendance and mean that 5 people are actually needed to cover that specific workload.
Activity timings are enhanced by a specific absence factor for CPS covering -
- Annual leave (an average of 26 days per person per annum),
- Sickness (an average of 10 days per person per annum)
- Training (an average of 4 days per person per annum)
- Public holidays and privilege days (currently 10.5 days per person per year)
The level of sickness allowed in ABC models does not reflect the actual CPS sickness level (9.2 days recorded absence per staff member in 2003).
The level of training days allowed in the models is a notional allowance for modeling purposes and not based on a detailed training needs analysis.
In total, staff figures generated by ABC are enhanced to reflect the fact that on average, each member of CPS staff will be absent for 50.5 of the available 260 days in the working year (52 * 5 days). Using this information we can enhance any measured time in minutes, or total staff required, to include allowance for annual leave, sickness etc.
What is Travelling time?
ABC, in trying to cater for all aspects of the prosecution process, recognises that travel time in connection with court attendance or attendance at police premises in connection with casework can consume a significant proportion of the resource time available to an Area. Some CPS Areas are adjacent to Courts; while others are many miles distant, making travel time one of the major variables between Areas.
Each year the ABC Team issue a questionnaire to all Areas asking for details of Charging centres and courts served, return journey times (in miles and minutes), and number of half-day sessions in each court over a year. Areas also estimate the proportion of courts lasting more than half-a-day and also a proportional split between each staff level who are travelling. Courts lasting for more than a half-day attract one return journey only as no provision is made for a return to the office at lunch time in the calculation.
Data is spreadsheeted to show the journeys undertaken by staff in each business unit to each court location and police site by each business unit in all Areas calculate the total minutes spent travelling by each Business Unit within each Area. This figure is then converted into a total number of posts required each year to cover the travel requirement in each Area.
Any posts "earned" through travel time are added as a distinct element to each Area's ABC staffing "earned" by casework. This enables an Area to easily see how many posts are being devoted purely to travel in each business unit from year to year.
Nationally, travel time costs account for around 6.5% of the total ABC costs, although there will be variations around the country dependent upon geography, transport links and court locations etc.
Travel time questionnaire - hints for Areas
Each year the ABC team issue a travel time questionnaire to Areas requesting details of journeys made to Courts and Police premises. Although some of the information is either already collected or readily to hand in the Area, there will be other parts of the questionnaire that no statistics are normally available. If your Area has recently or is about to re-organise, this may mean that information is not available on new journey patterns. The ABC Team recommend that staff responsible for co-coordinating the completion of the questionnaire assess the parts of the form where they have no current information and set up some form of data collection for at least some parts of the year, so that they are able to provide an informed response to the questionnaire. If you have re-organised recently we advise that you contact the ABC Team before starting completion of the forms.
The 3 steps to ensuring that the travel time exercise runs as smoothly as possible in your Area are -
Preparation
- Look at previous questionnaires and determine where information is not going to be readily available. Set up systems and data collection to ensure that at the least an informed estimate can be made for these items.
- Ensure that more than one person in the Area trained and clear on what is required and how to complete the travel time form.
- Ensure that all staff involved in supplying data are aware of the purpose of travel time and its importance.
- Start as soon as the form is received - it always takes longer than you think!
Quality assurance
- Before a questionnaire is returned to the ABC Team check it thoroughly and investigate any significant changes from previous returns. (A list of common errors is shown).
- Ensure that your Area Business Manager is aware that the return is to be made, has had the opportunity to examine it and establish that they are content for it to be sent.
Advice/guidance
- If in any doubt about how to complete the form, always contact the ABC team. A contact point is always shown on the covering letter with the questionnaire.
- If you are unclear about what you have to do and can't find anyone else in the Area who is, always contact the ABC Team who will provide advice and training.
Common problems
- Journey times provided are one way rather than return.
- Percentage of travel by different grades does not add up to 100%.
- Agent sessions, Weekend and Bank Holiday sessions omitted.
- Details on EFH/EAH sessions incomplete.
- Missing entries in columns asking for proportion of courts treated than half a day.
- Errors in start/finish points for EFH/EAH review journeys to Police premises.
Note - a single error on one travel time return reduced an Area's budget share from 1.43% to 1.40% - only 0.03%, but this translated into 60,000 of budget = 1 Prosecutor!
To sum up
ABC provides CPS with a number of clear advantages.
- More equitable distribution of running cost resources/budgets to the 42 CPS Areas, based on their relative caseload and case type.
- More open, transparent (and speedy) system for allocating resources to a large number of stakeholders.
- Meaningful performance management information for managers at all levels within the organisation, and beyond.
- Accurate operational costing on all aspects of CPS performance, and costing support for any "what-if" scenarios, or policy changes.
- Contributes on assurances to government and other bodies on CPS cost efficiency.
- Accurate costing of new proposals for CPS and support for business cases / benefits realisation work on all major change initiative projects and programmes.
- Identification and subsequent costing of immutable local factors that impact on the overall cost of prosecution.
- Identification and advice on the avoidance of inefficiencies within the CPS prosecution process.
- Essential information to other agencies (ABC is a leading contributor to CJS planning models) about the cost of common areas of concern - important in the Criminal Justice System where performance is often dependent upon other Agencies.
Further information/contacts
If you have any other questions regarding Activity Based Costings and Timings, the ABC team can be contacted at on the following numbers:
Andy Beard
ABC Teamleader
Room 14.12
Colmore Gate
Birmingham
B3 2QA
Tel: 0121 262 1120
Mob: 07901 856258
or
Jackie Bosworth
ABC Team
Room 14.12
Colmore Gate
Birmingham
B3 2QA
Tel: 0121 262 1121
Mob: 07984 906894
or
Shaun Morris
ABC Team
Room 14.12
Colmore Gate
Birmingham
B3 2QA
Tel: 0121 262 1127
Mob: 07867 584438
or
Paul Martin
ABC Change Manager
Room 211
United House
York
YO1 9PQ
Tel: 01904 545663
Mob: 07901 856259
The ABC team is happy to deal at any time with queries on any aspect of timings, workflows, allowances and absence factor. Further information on measurement methods and techniques used can also be provided.
Enquiries on Resource models, the Corporate Information System, budgets and ABC modelling may be addressed in the first instance to:
Activity Costs
Richard Cole
Area Resources
CPS HQ
United House
York
YO1 9PQ
Tel: 01904-545598
or
Julie Brookes
Area Resources
CPS HQ
United House
York
YO1 9PQ
Tel: 01904-545595
If your question concerns the distribution/allocation of resources to Areas, direct your query to Richard Cole. If external, e-address for all the above is; name.name@cps.gsi.gov.uk
The ABC database is available on CD-ROM to anyone who requires it. Contact any ABC Team member above.