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| Q | How are revenue and capital costs defined? |
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| A | Revenue relates to the day-to-day running costs including small items of equipment such as play equipment. It will be funded from the new places element of the General Sure Start Grant in 2004-06. Large pieces of play and office equipment over £500 it will need to be listed on an assets register. Sure Start Out of School funding is not ring-fenced within the General Sure Start Grant. This means that planning for and monitoring spend is crucial. Capital relates to all build aspects of the programme and includes buying land, building a new facility, or major refurbishing of facilities including external spaces and outdoor play areas. This will also be funded through the General Sure Start Grant and is not individually ring-fenced. Can Capital funding be vired into revenue funds, or vice versa? No What are the upper unit costs per place? The revenue unit costs are an average and the local authority has discretion over levels of funding to address particular issues, for example, SEN places have been traditionally more expensive to fund. The issue should be the business need of the bid and its fits into local strategic planning and priorities. Develop bids based on real costs and not to meet the level of a unit price. When funding an area of disadvantage, it is crucial that the local authority budgets cover the payments over 3 years. When planning it maybe useful to develop some benchmark costs for different provisions such as the range of play equipment needed or administration costs rather then publishing that places are funded up to an average maximum per place. The key point is that the total number of places created and the total funding used should be reconciled back to these averages. Individual bids are therefore free to fund above and below. It will also be possible to use other streams of revenue and capital without causing the Sure Start Out of School grant to be reduced as it is a grant and not stop-gap funding. Capital costs do not fund places and are set at an upper average unit cost of £333. |
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