Part III - Annual TRAC

Section C: Staff costs

Chapter C.3 Support staff

Support staff in academic departments

1. The cost of staff who have been charged to research projects as a directly incurred cost (e.g. some laboratory technicians) should be attributed to Research in the annual TRAC process. Where they have completed timesheets, the balance of their time not charged to Research should be attributed to Teaching, Other or Support as identified through those timesheets.
2. The Research time of all other laboratory technicians should be directly charged to research projects as a directly allocated cost (at least by 1 August 2007). As part of this, an analysis of the time of this group of staff would have been carried out, and should inform the attribution of their annual cost to activities – see Part IV Charge-out rates.
3. The costs of other support staff in academic departments is a Support cost (and forms part of the indirect cost rate).
4. To this can be added the costs of RAs who are ‘in-between’ projects and who are not engaged significantly in institution-/own-funded Research, or Teaching. Their costs should be attributed to Support.
5. These Support costs should then be attributed to activities using a robust approach. These costs should not automatically be attributed to activities on the basis of academic staff time, nor should it be assumed that they only relate to Teaching. An example of a robust approach is to provide heads of department or equivalent with a list of these costs and ask them to indicate the appropriate percentage split between Teaching, Research and Other.
6. Institutions could alternatively ask these staff to complete time allocation schedules (perhaps on an annual basis) but the administrative burden of this should be carefully considered – it is not a TRAC requirement.

Support staff in central departments

7. The costs of staff associated with residences, catering, conferences, should be attributed directly to Other. Some other staff (for example, working in university consultancy companies or other trading companies) should be attributed to Other where appropriate.
8. All other staff costs in central departments are attributable initially to Support. The costs of staff in each functional area should then be aggregated with non-staff costs in that area, for attribution to Teaching, Research and Other – see Chapter D.2. These totals (Support costs for Research, for example) are then included in the costs that form part of each indirect cost rate calculation (or, in the case of the estates staff, the estates charges).
9. In particular, staff associated with estates, or premises, should be attributed to a cost pool containing all estates costs. Staff associated with libraries or learning resources should be attributed to a cost pool for libraries.