Part III - Annual TRAC

Section D: All other costs

Chapter D.2 Support costs

1. Support costs for each activity and for each department should be identified and totalled. This will consist of the totals of all the Support cost pools, prior to their attribution to activities. It provides the totals that will be included in the indirect cost rate and estates charge calculations.
2. Support costs are costs that are shared, and cannot be directly attributed to activities. They include indirect costs and estates costs. They are defined in Annex 6.
3. Estates costs of central service departments are initially held in the estates cost pool, but are then attributed to the cost pools for central service departments. This element of estates is therefore attributed to activities along with other central service costs, and they are included in the indirect cost rate, not the estates charges.
4. Some of the costs of estates, laboratory technicians, and major research facilities will be recorded in the financial accounts (on the project cost records) as Research. These are historically based estimates and should not form the basis for cost attribution to annual TRAC. Actual costs should be attributed to activities using cost drivers.
5. The Support cost total, together with directly incurred costs and other costs that have been charged directly to an activity, should agree with the financial statements including exceptional costs, less the net cost of capital employed and net infrastructure adjustment.
6. Support costs are to be attributed to Teaching, Research and Other, as shown in the table above.
7. In some cases it will be a straightforward process (e.g. research administration to Research; most of Registry to Teaching – although some costs will need to be attributed to Research for the PGR student usage of Registry).
8. Otherwise, a reasonable cost driver might be all ‘other costs already attributed’.
9. Non-staff costs (and support staff) in academic departments which are not directly chargeable to an activity 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, or only to Research. An example of a robust approach is periodically 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.