Financial Review

The CPS's net funding, as voted by Parliament, for the period to 31 March 2012 was £622 million.

Financial Results

In delivering the public prosecution service the Department spent a total of £655 million. After taking into account £64 million income, the total net resource requirement was £591 million which was £31 million or 5.0% less than the sum Voted to the CPS by Parliament.

Net total resources

The table below shows the CPS's net expenditure since 2006-07. It indicates that last year we spent less than in any other year in this period and that between 2009-10 and 2011-12 net expenditure fell by £83 million or 12.5%.

Graph: Net Total Resources 2006-2012

Graph data:

• 2006-07 = £616m
• 2007-08 = £633m
• 2008-09 = £632m
• 2009-10 = £672m
• 2010-11 = £614m
• 2011-12 = £589m

Income

When costs are awarded by courts, the CPS recovers some of the costs of its prosecutions from defendants and is allowed to recognise these cost awards as income.

In addition, the CPS recovers criminal assets through its confiscation, restraint and enforcement activity and under the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme the department retains a proportion of the value of the assets so recovered.

Over the year the CPS received net income of £64.2 million – a decrease of 10.3% over the equivalent figure from 2010-11 of £72.6 million. Whilst the majority of the CPS's income is made up of recovered criminal assets and awards of court costs, the greater part of the decrease was attributable to a premium of £5.7 million received for the early vacation of the main headquarters building in Ludgate Hill, London in 2010-11.

The CPS's resources and expenditure are analysed between Administration Costs and Crown Prosecutions and Legal Services.

Administration Costs represents the costs of running the Department and includes only those costs not attributed to front line services directly associated with the prosecution of criminal cases. It includes staff salaries, other staff-related expenditure, accommodation and related costs for administrative staff based in the CPS Headquarters and accounts for just 4.7% of net resource outturn.

Overall, the CPS’s net outturn against its Administration budget was £27.9 million compared to net provision of £42.6 million (Note 3b). The outturn represents a decrease of £11.3 million or 28.8% against the figure of £38.9 million for 2010-11 and was the result of lower spending on salaries, accommodation and consultancy.

Crown Prosecutions and Legal Services cover the direct and indirect costs of taking cases to court and makes up over 94% of the CPS’s total resource expenditure (Note 2). After the cost of front line staff salaries, most of the expenditure is associated with the costs of the more serious cases, which are heard in the Crown Court and comprise the costs of employing barristers as advocates, paying allowances and expenses to prosecution witnesses who attend court, the cost of expert testimony and a number of other less significant costs associated with the prosecution process.

In 2011-12 net expenditure on Crown Prosecutions and Legal Services was £557 million compared with provision of £569 million representing an underspend of £12 million.

Consultancy and Professional Charges

The reduction in Consultancy and Professional charges from £3.140 million in 2010-11 to £1.563 million in 2011-12 (Note 8) was driven by a general decrease in the use of professional services including on HR, IT and legal services. The CPS did not employ consultants in 2011-12.

Crown Court Advocacy

The CPS uses two fees schemes for the payment of self-employed advocates' fees. The majority of cases in the Crown Court handled by external advocates are paid under the graduated fee scheme (GFS). GFS is a formulaic scheme using a range of measures to determine the fee, and measures include offence category, pages of evidence, numbers of witnesses, outcome type, etc. In March 2012 a new, simplified scheme (Scheme C) was launched that is simpler to administer and which introduced revised rates.

Capital Expenditure

Capital expenditure is focused on improving the Department's estate and office environment and investment in IT through the PFI arrangement with Logica.

The Department spent a total of £0.79 million on the purchase of fixed assets and of this the great majority was for purchases of furniture and fittings.

Movements in Working Capital other than Cash

The closing balance on trade receivables and other current assets due within one year fell slightly from £58.8 million in 2010-11 to £56.1 million in 2011-12.

In the same period trade payables and other current liabilities rose from £86.2 million to £107.9 million. The £21.7 million increase was driven mainly by a rise of £15.3 million in the year end Consolidated Fund creditor and of £8.4 million in accruals and deferred income.

Provisions for liabilities and charges

At the end of the financial year the CPS held total provisions of £16.3 million. Of this, £7.4 million was to cover the future cost of early departures and £8.9 million was for other expenses including relatively small amounts to cover personal injury and employment tribunal claims.

Non-current assets

At £40.3 million property, plant and equipment and intangible assets showed a fall of £11.6 million over the equivalent figure for 2010-11 of £51.9 million. In the case of property, plant and equipment the reduction was largely accounted for by disposals and depreciation. In the case of intangible assets a decrease in net values of £3.9 million was mainly due to amortisation charged in year.

Cash and cash equivalents

The CPS held £28.6 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the reporting year – an increase of £15.5 million from the 2010-11 balance of £13.1 million. This increase was largely caused by Supply in excess of cash outflows from operating activities (£25.8 million) offset by the capital element of payments for on balance sheet PFI contracts (£9.0 million).

Net cash flow from operating activities amounted to £566.3 million (£616.6 million in 2010-11), from investing activities was £1.2 million (£4.4 million in 2010-11) and from financing activities was £9.0 million (£8.6 million in 2010-11).

Reconciliation of resource expenditure between Estimates, Accounts and Budgets

Description	2011-12 £000	2010-11 £000
Net Resource Outturn (Estimates)	591,077	613,317
Adjustments to remove non-budget elements:
Consolidated Fund Extra Receipts in the resource budget (a)		(389)
Total Resource Budget Outturn	591,077	612,928
of which:
Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL)	585,375	625,034
Annually Managed Expenditure (AME)	5,702	(12,106)
Adjustments to include:
Voted expenditure outside the budget (b)	26,784	28,328
Adjustments to remove:
Non-voted expenditure in the budget (c)	(29,094)	(28,873)
Net Operating Cost (Accounts)	588,767	612,383

This table reconciles the outturn as reported in the Resource Accounts to the Resource Budget Outturn.

(a) Consolidated Fund Extra Receipts (CFERS) are miscellaneous amounts that the CPS is not able to recognise as income and which are surrendered directly to the Consolidated Fund.

(b) Voted expenditure outside the budget relates to charges in respect of the CPS's two PFI contracts arising from the adoption of IFRS.

(c) Non-voted expenditure in the budget relates to nominal payments under operating leases which are recognised in the European System of Accounts (ESA) which underpins the Government's budgeting framework but not within either accounting or Estimates frameworks, which both reflect International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).