Thematic report on COPFS Enquiry Point

106. A business case was created by the Enquiry Point Project Board in 2008. This included the costs associated with the Enquiry Point.

107. We note from the business case that there was an initial one off cost of £152K for refurbishing, furnishing, IT and resilience while the Enquiry Point was being set up. We were unable to confirm this with COPFS finance division as they advised that records were not retained of the actual set up costs.

108. Estimations in staffing costs were greatly reduced before full implementation of the Enquiry Point as a result of reviewing the actual number of calls and average length of calls. It was initially expected that there would be a need for 32 staff but this was reduced to 21 and then again to 14.

109. Figures provided by the COPFS finance division relating to salaries and office costs since the set up of the Enquiry Point showed consistent expenditure over the 4 years. These figures, however, did not include costs relating to accommodation and utilities since the Enquiry Point is located in the building occupied by the Procurator Fiscal's Office Dumbarton and it was agreed at the start that such costs would be included as part of Argyll and Clyde's overall budget for the Dumbarton office.

110. At present costs relating to the Enquiry Point are split between three budgets:

• ISD for hardware and software
• Dumbarton Procurator Fiscal's Office for utilities
• Enquiry Point - staffing and other costs

Recommendation 9

It is recommended that management under the new Customer Care Unit identify and monitor all costs relating to the Enquiry Point in order to realise the true cost of running the Enquiry Point.