The cost centres referred to in this field are the HESA-defined cost centres.
The most important consideration in taking decisions about the attribution of students to cost centres should be the correspondence with the HESA Finance record. Effectively, the cost centre follows the money and should relate to where financial resources deployed to teach the student are located.
Where a department buys in the services of a member of staff based in a department in a non-academic cost centre, the cost centre to be returned would be that of the buying in department.
Where a part of the module is taught by another provider, expenditure related to this provision must be included against academic cost centres in the Finance record. It has been agreed that the cost centre on the Student record should match this allocation, i.e. providers should code cost centre according to their organising department.
Cost centre 996 is 'not assignable' and should only be used in cases where it is not possible to allocate the activity to an academic cost centre, e.g. where the appropriate cost centre is a non-academic cost centre.
For 'Approved (fee cap)' providers in England, the OfS make use of cost centres in their funding allocations. The OfS have stated that provision returned under cost centre 996 will be allocated to the lowest price group for funding.
Examples
A member of staff based in the General Engineering cost centre takes a group of engineering students for a mathematics lecture, the cost centre should be General Engineering (115).
A member of staff based in the Mathematics cost centre takes a group of engineering students for a mathematics lecture, the cost centre should be Mathematics (122).
A member of staff based in the computing service takes a group of engineering students for a lecture and is paid for under a servicing agreement by the engineering department, the cost centre returned should be General Engineering (115).
A franchised module is taught by another provider's mathematics department, the activity is organised by the reporting provider's engineering department. The cost centre returned should be General Engineering (115).
