DE&S is financially governed through annual Control Totals on RDEL and CDEL (see Appendix A for further detail), and the consequences of breaching these at Departmental level are severe. Therefore, appropriately, significant management effort is devoted to meeting these Control Total targets.
However, as issues around underlying affordability increase the challenge of meeting Control Totals, the level of management effort required to manage money "in-year" has increased significantly. Introduction of the commitment control regime ("CCR") and reduced levels of financial delegation (both to the Department and within the Department) are further evidence of the increasing pressures on near term cash management.
The consequence of this increased management effort is not only evident in demands on management time and accounting resources, but also has potentially damaging consequences for projects, long-term costs and output (see cost and time delays in Chapter 7).