date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:24:08 +0000 from: Clare Goodess subject: Fwd: RE: Financial arrangements in centres to: P.Jones@uea.ac.uk,k.Briffa@uea.ac.uk,alan.ovenden@uea.ac.uk third paragraph relates to the library. Clare From: "Alastair Grant" To: "'Phil Jones'" , "'Burgess Jacquelin Prof \(ENV\)'" Cc: , , , , "'White Carrie Mrs \(ACAD\)'" Subject: RE: Financial arrangements in centres Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:53:32 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.6838 thread-index: AckBLWeYzbOBKa+pTQyECestcyoTWwAyYsrw Phil: Please be assured that we greatly value the excellent science that CRU has done over many years and we certainly do not wish to undermine one of ENV and UEAs jewels in the crown. Personally, Im very excited by the potential that the appointment of William Cheung and Aldina Franco give for strengthening links between ecology and climate change and the work on the impacts of climate change on agricultural systems that is developing within ELSA and CRU will clearly be central to the Schools contribution to LWEC. These changes are about simplifying administrative systems to try to give you more time to do excellent science and to reduce administrative burdens on staff both within CRU and in the rest of the school. There is a real danger that the hidden costs of staff time taken up making decisions about budgets are much greater than the relatively small sums of money involved. When we take into account all running costs, the cost to the school of a professor is heading towards £100 an hour. So I want to reduce the time that the CRU Board needs to spend discussing small amounts of money to release time to discuss strategic science issues. The funding from the CRU library remains in place, but has transferred to the ENV publications budget Carrie will be able to give you the account number. I think that I worked on the basis of the original budget but Im happy to work on the basis of £3300 for the coming year. On many of the other issues that you identify, we are basically saying that the sums of money are too small to merit spending much time monitoring budgets. To give a wider example of the philosophy, during the year we have stopped bothering to ask people to check their phone printouts for private calls, because the amounts recovered werent worth the effort that it took up. The examples of this here are that costs of office supplies, stationery, photocopying, telephones and post will be covered by the general school budgets for these. Reception will no longer need to track CRU post separately from the rest of ENV, and Sylvia will no longer need to worry about which stationery is paid for by ENV and which by CRU. Research that involves large mail shots or print jobs or extensive telephone calls etc, should cover these costs as in the past, but the school will pay for general use of all these things and CRU no longer needs to worry about them. On travel, non-reclaimable VAT on travel will be handled in the same way that we do for the rest of the School, so again the CRU board do not need to worry about this. Weve allocated a travel budget of £250 each to the academic staff this money can simply be spent without prior authorisation. We will also pick up reasonable travel costs for visiting speakers there will, no doubt, need to be some discussion with Carrie about what reasonable means and there is an overall school limit on the visiting speaker budget. But together these will certainly total more than the £1200 budget for the non VAT element of ENV.37.3.16. Under the system that you outline, research staff who wanted want funds for travel have had to apply to the CRU board for funding. Under the new arrangements, they are able to request money from an ENV budget for travel related to proposal development, and straightforward requests usually get a response in a day or two. So in total, I would expect CRU to receive significantly more money for travel than in the past. We probably do need a discussion about what you have used 37.4.21 (Computer and software maintenance) and 37.7.15 (computer equipment) to cover. We want to achieve consistency across the whole School, and under fEC, we need to try to charge these costs to research grants wherever possible. Without seeing the detail, these budgets look a bit more generous than those in the rest of the school, but any decreases here will be roughly balanced by increased resources for travel. Would it be possible for someone to give a brief summary of what these budgets have covered please? We can then have a chat about these elements of the budget and any other issues that need resolving preferably after Im back from the Ireland fieldcourse which runs from 6^th to 19^th September. What is your schedule like in the week beginning 22^nd September? I hope that this helps deal with your concerns. There will, Im sure, be a bit of pain during the transition, but the net result will be a streamlined system that takes up less time for academic staff and researchers and gives a similar level of financial support to that in previous years. Yours, Alastair _______________________________________________ Alastair Grant Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (CEEC) Deputy Head of School, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK Phone 01603 592 537 Fax 01603 591327 Mobile/Voicemail 07941579036 Home page: [1]http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e130 CEEC web page: [2]http://www.uea.ac.uk/ceec MSc programme in Applied Ecology and Conservation: [3]http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/sci/bio/courses/postgraduates/Taught%2BCourses/ aec -----Original Message----- From: Phil Jones [[4] mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk] Sent: 18 August 2008 13:25 To: Alastair Grant; 'Burgess Jacquelin Prof (ENV)' Cc: c.goodess@uea.ac.uk; k.briffa@uea.ac.uk; t.osborn@uea.ac.uk; d.maraun@uea.ac.uk Subject: Re: Financial arrangements in centres Jacquie, Alastair, Attachment also pasted here. Cheers Phil Dear Alastair and Jacquie We were very surprised and disappointed to receive your email of 16 July informing us, with no prior consultation, of your decision to remove the CRU school grant. CRU is the longest-established centre within the school set up in 1972 ( [5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/) and it is no historical accident that we have an internationally-renowned reputation and identity. As the introduction to UEAs Corporate Plan says We were the first university in the world to establish a Climatic Research Unit and have continued to be a global leader in the study of climate change and its mitigation. In June this year, the ENDS report said that CRU is widely recognised for navigating the study of climate change out of an academic backwater and has set the agenda for the major research effort in this area ever since" and we were specifically cited in their list of key bodies that have set the environmental agenda in the UK over the past 30 years. Jacquie had a good opportunity to see how far our reputation extends when she brought lay members of UEA Council to CRU for a visit in March. This reputation is backed up by a strong publishing record (according to a Web of Science search for 1998-2007, CRU has published 289 papers, with 8620 citations, an average of 30 citations per paper). We make these points to demonstrate that CRU is not just a loose association of people, but a long-established unit, with focussed aims and a management structure dedicated to achieving them. As well as our Director and Deputy Director, we have a 30% time Research and Administration Manager, Clare Goodess. Her responsibilities include management of the CRU School Grant. Her main contact with finance administrative staff is Christine Webster. Until very recently she has been dependent on Christine for providing statements of expenditure since she did not have access to view the account (something taken up with Carrie White and others some time ago). Now she is able to view the account through the Discovery Reporting system, which will considerably reduce the call on Christines time. CRU also has a Strategic Plan, introduced in early 2005, and currently under review by CRU Board and CRU Forum. As your email of 16 July indicates, one of the items in the CRU school grant is travel and subsistence. In 2007/08, our £2000 travel budget was divided fairly evenly between paying taxes which cannot be claimed on EC-funded travel, and travel for CRU staff and invited seminar speakers. Decisions on travel are taken by CRU Board with strategic considerations the foremost criterion. Thus we pay for staff to attend meetings associated with proposal development and invite seminar speakers that will enhance our strategic and academic links. Funding is provided not just to our faculty members, but also to our research staff. The CRU School Grant also covers office supplies and stationery, photocopying and printing, telephones and post. In addition, and very importantly, it also includes money for computer and software maintenance and consumables, computer equipment, and maintaining the CRU library (book purchase, periodicals and subscriptions and binding). The CRU Library is a major resource not only for CRU but for the School and the University. CRU has a part-time IT Manager, Mike Salmon, and he manages the computing budgets together with Clare Goodess, according to CRUs rolling five-year IT plan which is approved by CRU Board and CRU Forum. The CRU Library is managed by Alan Ovenden, 0.5 days per week. In 2007/08, the Library budget allocated was £2800, but we have had to vire money from other headings due to rising costs, and expenditure has been about £3300. As with computing costs, there is no indication in your email as to whether the CRU Library budget has been maintained. Our library is a major resource for staff and students in CRU and ENV, and attracts many international visitors. Just now, we are beginning to get requests for renewals of some of our journal subscriptions. In conclusion, we consider that the current arrangements for managing the CRU School Grant have worked well. They have given us some flexibility over expenditure, within constraints, and probably allow us to make quicker decisions when anything urgent arises. As a well-established Unit, we have a strategic overview and a strong management structure, that we believe warrants us retaining separate budgets. For 2007/08, the CRU School Grant totalled £13990. At the present time, we have no idea of the funding that is potentially available to us (presumably we would have to bid for many items under the new arrangements) in the coming year. Clearly this makes it very difficult to plan and manage effectively and efficiently. The removal of the CRU School Grant will likely add to administrative burden of CRU staff. It will further reduce the little flexibility we have, but perhaps more significantly, it will erode the sense of identity shared by CRU members suggesting a lack of appreciation on behalf of the School of CRUs efforts and achievements over past decades. Thus we urge you to reconsider the decision that the two of you have taken with respect to CRU. Phil Jones on behalf of the CRU Board At 12:34 16/07/2008, you wrote: Largely as a result of historical accident, some groups within ENV have had separate budgets while others have not. For example, CEEC has had a budget, while LGMAC has not. Current arrangements for managing centre budgets have been creating un-necessary work for administrative staff. We have also had a situation in which there has been a lack of equity between faculty members. For example, some have had access to travel budgets while others have not. To simplify financial management and to remove these anomalies, Jacquie and I have agreed that we should have a uniform set of financial procedures across the School, so that all faculty members are treated in the same way. The only exception will be centres that are funded by a large core grant and have a centre administrator to manage a centre budget. The details are in the attached document. Carrie will make arrangements with staff responsible for placing orders in most cases it will simply be a case of putting a different budget code on the order after 1^st August. Alastair _______________________________________________ Alastair Grant Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (CEEC) Deputy Head of School, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK Phone 01603 592 537 Fax 01603 591327 Mobile/Voicemail 07941579036 Home page: [6]http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e130 CEEC web page: [7]http://www.uea.ac.uk/ceec MSc programme in Applied Ecology and Conservation: [8]http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/sci/bio/courses/postgraduates/Taught%2BCourses/ aec Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Clare Goodess Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ UK Tel: +44 -1603 592875 Fax: +44 -1603 507784 Web: [9]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ [10]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~clareg/clare.htm