Closure FAQ
A1 The costs of redundancy for eligible staff must be paid. If partnerships are able to agree with partners that some of the costs will be borne by partners’ funding then that is allowable. The full cost of redundancy can be met from the partnership’s Aimhigher funding allocation in accordance with the letter of guidance (issued 17 January).
Q2 Can the partnership decide the level of redundancy costs that they should pay?
A2 As set out in paragraph 9 c) of the letter of guidance, the redundancy payments should meet the contractual agreement between the employer and the member of staff. If partners wish to pay more than the contractual amount they may do so but this should not be from Aimhigher funds.
Q3 Should redundancy costs be met even if this means that Aimhigher activity planned for the year has to be cut or altered?
A3 To the extent that the costs of redundancy are met by Aimhigher funding then we recognise that this may mean that Aimhigher activity has to be cut or altered in some circumstances.
Q4 Does the guidance issued on 17 January constitute additional ‘conditions of grant’?
A4 No, it is guidance about the allowable use of Aimhigher funds.
Q5 The guidance in the original funding letter (August 2008) stated that lead HEIs should submit self-certification returns by 31 August 2011. The latest guidance says 31 October 2011. Which is correct?
A5 We require lead HEIs to submit the self-certification return by 31 October 2011. The same date applies to the self-certification return for Aimhigher Associates.
Q6 You have asked for evaluation and monitoring returns by 30 September and for lead HEIs to submit self-certification returns by 31 October. What role should the APC play in these returns and should they continue to meet beyond 31 July?
A6 We would expect APCs to review the monitoring and evaluation returns to be submitted by HEFCE by 30 September, although this could be undertaken by email if more suitable. We would also expect the APC to offer advice to assist in the certification process. If partnerships consider an APC meeting necessary beyond 31 July 2011, then this is an allowable cost against Aimhigher funding.
Q7 May we continue to pay the Chair’s honorarium beyond 31 July if necessary?
A7 Yes, the Chair’s honorarium is an allowable cost.
Q8 In the original grant letter (issued August 2008) it was stated that HEFCE would carry out Audit in the following circumstances:
- Where monitoring returns (or the lack of monitoring returns) or other information received indicated that audit work was appropriate
- Where the Aimhigher Management Group requested audit work to be undertaken
- Where, as a result of internal audit work within HEFCE (or the LSC) on the Aimhigher programme, we concluded there was value in reviewing the arrangements in place within institutions
- Where audit advice was sought in any review of institutional Aimhigher arrangements for the purposes of providing good practice advice to the sector.
Do these circumstances stay the same or have they changed?
A8 They stay the same.
Q9 Is there a requirement for lead HEIs to audit how schools, academies and colleges have spent their Aimhigher funding.
A9 See further guidance on direct funding below and the original grant letter sent in August 2008. We expect the lead HEI to provide us with sufficient assurance that:
- The grant for this Aimhigher area partnerships has been used for the purposes provided;
- The lead HEI and Aimhigher area partnerships has complied with any general and specific conditions attached to the Aimhigher grant provided;
- The lead HEI and Aimhigher partnership has taken reasonable steps to achieve value for money in using the grant provided.
How lead HEIs achieve this assurance is for them to decide.
Q10 Annex B: redundancy costs by employer: where should we note the redundancy costs in relation to the central team?
A10 These should be recorded under Infrastructure costs – staff costs and cost of staff complement beyond July 2011.
Q11 Annex B: Activity costs by provider where should activity costs associated with the healthcare, summer school and Associates strands be recorded?
A11 Our aim in this budget template is to establish whether the programme can afford the costs of closure, including redundancy. For the purposes of this exercise we ask that all strands of the programme are included under Activity costs by provider as a total. The financial monitoring returns to be returned on 30 September will disaggregate expenditure by strand in the same way as last year.
Q12 It is unlikely that the new plan will bear much resemblance to the budget plan submitted in September 2010 for the 2010-11 year. Is this an issue?
A12 We expect there to be variance. We will contact partnerships if the total variance is large and not explicable through the sums set against redundancy payments or other closure costs.
Q13 Will there be separate guidance issued for the Aimhigher Associates programme?
A13 We do not plan to issue separate closure guidance. The Aimhigher Associates strand will be monitored and evaluated separately from the other strands and we will issue separate templates for the 30 September return (as we did last year).
Q14 Should costs for reporting against the Aimhigher Associates programme up to 31 October be taken only from the Associates budget, or can these costs be taken from main Aimhigher funding?
A14 We recognise that there is often overlap in staffing between the main Aimhigher programme and other strands, including Aimhigher Associates and that partnerships will have to employ some flexibility in apportioning costs of closure against each strand.
Q15 In paragraph 13 of the guidance issued on 17 January 2011 you say:
Due to the significant allocation of public funds to Aimhigher, HEFCE reserves the right to audit a sample of lead HEI’s financial and other records to examine the governance procedures in relation to Aimhigher.
What do you mean by ‘other records’?
A15 We refer you to the guidance given in the original grant letter to lead HEIs (August 2008). We would expect other records to include evidence that the lead HEI has fully discharged its duties as set out in that letter.
Q16 You ask that there is a point of contact up to 31 October 2011. What do you expect this person to do?
A16 We need to have a line in to someone who understands the monitoring return in sufficient detail that they can answer any queries we have. We will make a rapid check on each return and aim to come back quickly with questions, however we may not have any concerns. We will do our best to let the named person know as soon as possible if we have no queries.
Q17 If we can show that funding has been invoiced/spent in advance, can we continue with Aimhigher activities beyond 31 July 2011?
A17 The only activities which should be pursued beyond 31 July 2011 are Aimhigher summer schools and work to complete the monitoring and evaluation returns.
Q18 Can we share the guidance?
A18 Yes, the guidance is not confidential, you may share it as you wish.
Q19 What is the ‘start’ date for Aimhigher?
A19 The start date is 1 August 2001, when Excellence Challenge was established. We consider the Excellence Challenge and Partnerships for Progression programmes to be forerunners of the Aimhigher programme.
Q20 In paragraph 9 a. what is meant by the term ‘direct grant’?
A20 In brief, direct grant means payments to HEIs, Local Authorities, Schools, Academies and FE Colleges. It does not relate to payments to bodies under a commercial contract. A longer explanation about direct grants will be sent shortly, we are currently clearing the note with other funders.
Q21 In Annex B where you ask for total funding for Main Aimhigher, Healthcare etc, does this include underspend from 2009-10?
A21 Yes it does, please include the total funding available to the partnership across the various strands.
Q22 Paragraph 8 states that ‘Aimhigher funds unspent at final programme closure will be deducted from payments to the lead HEI as part of the December 2011 payment process’ - what is meant by this?
A22 We won’t know the final financial position of partnerships until after 30 September when we’ve received and analysed partnerships’ returns. If there are any funds to come back to us from funding through the HEFCE funding route because they remain unspent (ie clawback) then we will do this by reducing the regular HEFCE payment we make to HEIs in December. In other words, we will not invoice HEIs for the difference, but will net it off against the next payment we are due to make to them under their usual payment profile.
Q23 In the revised costed plan 2010-11 the activities costs by provider are not broken down by funding strand. Is it important that the health strand is funded by Department of Health or is this not relevant for this calculation?
A23 Not for this calculation where our requirement is to check that the obligations of the programme can be met by existing funds. We will monitor spend against activity when we do the end of year monitoring, as we did for 2009-10.
Q24 What is the deadline to submit plans to sustain collaborative activity beyond 2011? The end of February may be too early for our partnership to submit a proper response, either about redundancy costs or future plans. It would be better to delay our response until at least the end of March by which time we will have a better idea of costs and will have seen the White Paper.
A24 On redundancy: We know that many partnerships have already begun redundancy discussions with their staff. Where this is not the case then an estimate of total costs will be acceptable. Our immediate requirement is to establish that funding obligations can be met from programme funds. You can then update your response to us at a later date, which can be agreed between us. On future plans: We don’t need worked up plans, rather it would be useful to know what stage partnerships have reached in discussions and what the issues are – more an indication about whether discussions are taking place and their general intention. We understand that partnerships may not be able to offer absolute responses. What we are interested to know is whether discussions are taking place, and whether these relate to provision of activities or partnership or both. We hope to be able to draw down general themes - which may be used to inform policy decisions and further guidance. We will not be asking Aimhigher partnerships for substantive plans as these will be the business of the local partners.
Q25 Paragraph 9c states that ‘Redundancy payments met by Aimhigher should reflect the contractual agreement between the employer and the member of staff. Therefore, should an employer offer enhanced redundancy terms these are not an eligible claim against Aimhigher funding unless eligibility for enhanced terms were previously agreed in the contract.’ Does this mean that only the statutory minimum can be claimed by partners or does it mean the ‘normal’ employer-employee contract applies? The latter interpretation might mean that partners’ claims may vary.
A25 It is a reasonable use of Aimhigher funds for it to cover what the employee is entitled to, either statutorily or under contract. Of course some employment contracts offer better terms than the statutory ones, and if so, those contractual terms must be honoured and may be funded. We expect that there may be some variability in contract terms between partnerships and between partners within partnerships. Contractual terms are a local issue, not an issue for HEFCE. However, if an HEI or other partner has introduced (at any time since the closure of Aimhigher was announced) or wishes to offer newly enhanced terms that is a matter for it, but these enhanced terms cannot be met from Aimhigher funding.
Q26 Paragraph 14 c. says ‘all equipment funded through Aimhigher funds should be transferred to the lead HEI. The lead HEI should endeavour to use the equipment for activities with similar aims to the Aimhigher programme’. Is it acceptable for equipment to be shared with other partners where some collaborative framework continues beyond July 2011.
A26 Yes, this is acceptable.
Guidance relating to ‘Direct Grant’
The advice below sets out our expectations in terms of monitoring and accountability of funding at programme closure. This advice builds on that in the original funding letter sent to lead HEIs in August 2008 (copy attached).
We know that partnerships receive funding in a several way; some using the dual route of HEFCE and DfE/YPLA and some receiving the total partnership allocation from HEFCE.
We recognise that this is generic advice and invite partnerships to come back to us if they are not sure how it relates to their particular circumstance.
1. Direct grant is money paid to lead HEIs by HEFCE, and to local authorities (and so schools) by the DfE and to academies by the YPLA.
Monitoring
2. It is important that we, HEFCE, can report ‘in the round’ for the Aimhigher programme in terms of activity and expenditure. In order to gain this full picture we need to understand how much funding has been allocated to schools, academies, colleges and local authorities (and indeed other organisations) and how they have utilised this funding. We will therefore expect partnerships to monitor and report on all programme funding by 30 September 2011 using the same monitoring templates as for 2009-10.
Accountability
3. Lead HEIs are only accountable for Aimhigher funding that is routed through them, ie payments from HEFCE.
4. This means that, where partnerships have chosen to allocate funding directly to Local Authorities, schools, academies using HEFCE funds (ie, not using the DfE/YPLA route) then lead HEIs are accountable for these funds.
5. We will not expect the partnership or lead HEI to recoup underspend which results from funds routed through the DfE (or YPLA) to local authorities, schools or academies. We will expect the partnership or lead HEI to make every effort to recoup underspend resulting from funds routed through HEFCE.
6. To allow partnerships/lead HEIs to show the final expenditure outcome for Aimhigher funds allocated to them by HEFCE, we will use the same financial and activity monitoring templates that we used in 2009-10 but add an additional table. This table will ask partnerships to set out how much underspend relates to funding allocated by HEFCE through the lead HEI.
7. Our intention is to deduct this underspend from the lead HEI as part of their normal HEFCE funding payment made in December.
Redundancy payments
8. Redundancy payments are a legal entitlement linked to an individual’s employment contract and the terms and conditions offered by their employer. In terms of redundancy payments using Aimhigher funds, these may be made to staff in HEIs (leads and others), local authorities, schools, academies and FE colleges.
9. As set out in our guidance dated 17 January, institutions receiving direct grant payments should have factored redundancy costs into their budgets and therefore should not need to draw additional funds from the central Aimhigher budget held by the partnership.
Passing funds between the HEFCE and DfE/YPLA allocations
10. We think it useful to set out the various accountabilities and how this affects the movement of funds:
- Any Aimhigher funding originally allocated by the DfE or YPLA may not be passed to the partnership for general use.
- As described above, partnerships should be able to monitor and report (as they did for 2009-10) on DfE/YPLA-sourced Aimhigher funding that has been allocated to local authorities, schools and academies, but lead HEIs will not be accountable for this funding.
- Aimhigher funding allocated by the DfE/YPLA is ring-fenced for Aimhigher at the local authority level.
- Aimhigher funding allocated by the DfE/YPLA is not ring-fenced for Aimhigher at the school and academy level. Schools and academies are legally permitted to spend it on non-Aimhigher activity, subject to any other terms and conditions attached to it.
11. In this last case we would expect the agreements made between the partners to be honoured and some partnerships may have formal arrangements. In any case all parties should be doing all they reasonably can to meet their commitment.
Funding strands
12. Aimhigher funding consists of four funding strands:
- Main Aimhigher
- Summer Schools
- Healthcare
- Aimhigher Associates
13. In the financial template attached to the closure guidance issued on 17 January we drew together all funding strands into an overall total as our main concerns at this stage are; to establish that redundancy costs can be managed within the overall budget; to understand the effect of closure on activity expenditure up to the end of July and; to estimate the final funding balances across the programme.
14. The end of programme monitoring will use the templates put in place during 2009-10 which differentiate between the funding strands. Partnerships should therefore continue to monitor funding within the four funding strands and treat the strands separately.
Aimhigher 2008-11
Funding letter and annexes sent to all lead HEIs at the beginning of the 2008-11 funding phase
Aimhigher Associates
Funding letter sent to all lead HEIs at the beginning of the 2009-11 funding phase
