Form

General fund revenue account outturn: supplementary guidance on recharging and management and support services

Updated 24 April 2026

Applies to England

Guidance notes for approaching recharging and recording management and support services within the general fund revenue account.

These notes should be read in conjunction with RO General Guidance, specific guidance notes for completion of individual RO forms and CIPFA’s Service Reporting Code of Practice (SeRCOP). Please note that any guidance relating to these returns takes precedence over CIPFA guidance, wherever these are different.

1. Background

1.1 General

Within the general fund revenue account suite of data collection forms, management, administrative and support services expenditure must either be allocated directly, or apportioned and recharged to all appropriate service lines, in accordance with SeRCOP Section 3.

This is to ensure that reported figures accurately reflect the total cost of providing each service, inclusive of their share of central overheads. This guidance document aims to support consistency across authorities’ reporting of central service expenditure.

This document refers to lines in the Revenue Outturn form to demonstrate the requirements, but the principles also apply to the Revenue Account Budget (RA) and Quarterly Revenue Update (QRU) forms. The annex explains how to interpret these requirements for RA and QRU, which report net current expenditure only.

1.2 Management and support services (MSS)

Management and support services are defined as the administrative and operational functions that support the delivery of the various services provided by each local authority. They enable, govern, coordinate, or assure the delivery of services, rather than directly delivering service outcomes themselves.

These may include, but are not limited to:

• Finance: for example, budget planning and monitoring or payroll management
• Human Resources: for example, recruitment and training or employee relations
• IT: for example, system maintenance or user support
• Legal: for example, legal advice and contract management
• Property Management: for example, estate maintenance and repairs and asset management

1.3 Defining central versus service level costs

Authorities can draw their own distinctions between what is recorded as central MSS and what is directly allocated to service areas. The following represents our suggestion for how this might be approached to best align with other data returns.

Central costs are incurred because the organisation exists and is governed, regardless of the scale or mix of services delivered.

A cost should be treated as a service cost only where there is a clear, non‑arbitrary causal relationship between the activity and the service.

Authorities should consider whether a given activity would still occur if a given service ceased to be provided (or for single service authorities, if the activity would still occur if a different single service was provided). If so, it is most likely considered central.

For example:

• an HR team that delivers the workforce strategy would be considered central, as a workforce strategy would be developed regardless of the mix and scale of services provided
• a team dedicated to recruiting and retaining care workers would be considered a service level cost, as without a social care function, this activity would not be required
• a team that recruits with no fixed remit, across multiple service areas, would be considered central

2. Recording central MSS

2.1 Gross central MSS expenditure

When completing the revenue outturn form, total expenditure on central MSS should either be:

• reported under the running expenses and employee costs columns on RO6 Line 489; or
• directly allocated to running expenses and employee costs columns within individual service lines

2.2 Allocation and apportionment

All central MSS should ultimately be linked to the provision of services within the GFRA, to other accounts, or central government. For example, the overall cost of payroll administration can be variously linked to services provided based on headcount within those service areas.

Where direct allocation is used, record all gross expenditure directly under the running expenses and employee costs columns within individual service lines to which the expenditure relates. The rest of this section and sections 2.3 and 2.4 are not applicable to direct allocation.

In cases where direct allocation is not used, apportionment and recharging should be used. There is no single approach required for apportioning central MSS, but the distribution should, to a reasonable extent, be based in fact.

Apportionment methods based on the outputs of each expenditure category are preferred, as they support a clear link between the user and the benefit that they receive.

We will accept any apportionment method that is based in fact. These include, but are not limited to:

• Staffing-based methods, e.g. headcount FTE, budgeted posts, payroll costs, actual hours worked
• Financial scale, e.g. outturn expenditure, budgeted expenditure
• Activity-based methods, e.g. cases handled, referrals, assessments completed, applications processed, call handled
• IT-based methods, e.g. number of devices, users per system, licences allocated, data volumes
• Output-based methods, e.g. population served, households supported, service users, forecast demand, geographic coverage

2.3 Recharging

Once the costs have been apportioned, they should then be added to the service expenditure lines to which they refer. This can be either other lines within RO6, elsewhere in the revenue account, or other accounts (for example, the HRA).

Within RO1-6, this expenditure should be recorded either as employee costs (column 1) or running expenses (column 2), which will automatically sum into total expenditure (column 3).

Starting from the 2025-26 collection, this recharged expenditure should also be recorded in the new column 3a. This will show the total central MSS recharged to each service line, where previously this was only embedded within the total cost. Column 3a represents an ‘of which’ breakdown of the total expenditure already recorded within columns 1 and 2 and so does not sum into column 3 (total expenditure).

Only expenditure recharged from RO6 line 489 should be recorded in column 3a. Directly allocated expenditure should not be recorded in column 3a.

2.4 Netting off

To avoid double counting recharged central MSS expenditure, income associated with the recharge should feed in to the ‘other income’ column of RO6 Line 489. This is because the recharge represents service areas ‘paying for’ their share of central MSS, with the ‘payment’ coming from service areas/other accounts and being made to central services.

We ask that the income element of the recharge is recorded on RO6 lines 491 to 494, which provides a breakdown of where within an authority’s accounts the recharge is being made. This provides transparency over whether the recharge is to:

• Other lines in central services (line 491)
• Other service areas of the revenue account (line 492)
• Central government (line 493)
• Other accounts (line 494)

As expenditure recharged to RO1-6 will be recorded in the new column 3a, lines 491 and 492 will be automatically calculated. This reflects the fact that any recharged expenditure will be net off and so the sum of all entries into column 3a across the form should be equal to the sum of lines 491 and 492.

This breakdown is then also automatically summed alongside other (non-recharged) income into RO6 Line 489. As mentioned above, the intended outcome is that the net current expenditure for this line become nil (or negligible) following recharging.

2.5 Exceptions

The SeRCOP identifies the spending on some retirement benefit and unused asset costs as non-distributed. This means that they fall outside the scope of MSS on RO6 Line 489 and do not need allocating or recharging. For more information on what falls into these categories, please see RO6 lines 481 and 482 in the RO specific guidance.

3. Recording expenditure that is not central MSS

3.1 General

In some cases, services may share costs that are not considered central MSS, either because they are service level MSS or because they are not MSS. For example, expenditure flowing from a care facility that is shared for the purposes of providing both adult and children’s social care.

This expenditure should be recorded directly on the relevant service line under columns 1 and 2. It does not need recording in column 3a, as this is for central MSS only.

Service level MSS that are tied to the provision of a single main service area do not need recording in RO6 Line 489, as this is reserved for central MSS only.

No recharging is required, as direct allocation to relevant service lines is expected.

3.2 Recharging

Where direct allocation is not possible, the total of these costs should be recorded as employee costs (column 1) or running expenses (column 2) against one service. For example, the shared care facility mentioned above could be recorded under adult social care.

Then, costs should be apportioned to other service areas and recorded on the relevant lines, also under columns 1 and 2. For example, 40% of running expenses may relate to children’s social care and so 40% of the total cost is then also recorded under children’s social care running expenses.

To prevent double counting, the apportioned amount should be net off from the original service under ‘other income’. In the social care example, this would leave adult social care with 60% of the net cost and children’s social care with 40% of the net cost.

This approach is similar in principle to the central MSS approach, but starts with recording in a service area, rather than on RO6 Line 489. It also does not see any interaction with the new column 3a, which is reserved for central MSS only.

3.3 Additional reporting

Starting from the 2025-26 collection, we ask that the total sum of all internally recharged expenditure from each main service area is recorded as a memorandum item under the total line for that service. This should reflect all apportioned expenditure net off as other income for that main service area. In the example above, this would include the 40% share recharged to children’s social care within the adult social care memorandum box.

The purpose of this additional section is to more transparently report how much gross expenditure and other income relate to internal recharges.

Annex: Approach in RA/QRU

The above section relates to the approach taken for the RO collection, where expenditure and income for each line is input separately. For both RA and QRU collections, figures are reported on a net current expenditure basis only.

Given that the overall approach assumes that the net current expenditure for management and support services is reduced to nil after recharging, there is no dedicated line for this in RA and QRU.

Instead, management and support service expenditure should be allocated or apportioned and added to each service line directly. This will have the effect of simulating recharging without the breakdowns required in RO.