Q&A brief
The ten questions the executive team is most likely to ask, each answered from the model.
Not in itself. An underspend on pay usually means posts sat empty or take-up ran below plan, not a genuine saving. Here the biggest driver is DC Pension at -£74,623, pension take-up below the budgeted rate, which can reverse the moment take-up rises. Read it as headroom that has not yet been used, not money banked.
Three components account for most of it: DC Pension -£74,623, Basic -£55,410 and Bonus -£39,790. The net headline hides offsets, which is why the decomposition matters more than the single figure.
Two parts. £243k is committed, the cost of carrying the same team into next year (annualising mid-year starters, returns from leave, filling budgeted vacancies). £139k is the pay award at 3%. Only the second is a decision.
In-year, essentially the pay award, about £139k at 3% (roughly £46k a point). Everything else in the movement is already committed. Candidate roles are a separate, additive choice on top.
The largest are Exec Team (£1.08m), Customer Support (£502k), Finance (£502k), Engineering (£439k). The Exec Team is the single biggest line, which is expected for a small senior structure, but worth keeping in view against the grade-mix point below.
All 13 candidate roles across 3 scenarios, while they are proposals, none sit in the committed baseline. But the flexibility is before hiring: once a permanent role is filled, unwinding it is redundancy, not a free choice. If you want to keep the option open on a role, hire it as an FTC deliberately, that is a real lever, not a hedge.
82 established posts, 80 FTE. The establishment is broadly flat across the plan, so cost growth is rates, not bodies.
A and B grades carry 55.9% of cost on 23 FTE, an inverted pyramid. It is the clearest efficiency lever in the model, and worth modelling a rebalance in the decision tool before committing to it.
DC pension is budgeted at 8% but current take-up is 3.55%. That is the prudent call, but if take-up rises toward the budgeted rate, up to £74,623 of this year's underspend disappears. Hold 8%; do not budget to today's take-up.
Bonus is budgeted at 75% corporate achievement. A full-achievement year is the single largest upside sensitivity in the plan, and the assumption least within management control. Worth a sensitivity line at 100%.