ONS will continue to recover the costs of producing commissioned output from the 2001 and earlier Censuses, as section 4.2 of the Census Act 1920 requires. However, with the completion of all the main planned output from the 2001 Census, there will be a change in how the charge for a table is calculated.
Until April 2005, the cost of certain staff overheads for each table was offset against the main output work. In future, these will be added to the commissioned table charges. The effect is that from 27 May there will be a minimum charge of £100 + VAT for each table. This will comprise a standard charge of £50 + VAT to cover overheads, plus an unchanged standard charge of £50 + VAT per half day for table development and production.
Overall charges may be reduced where the average costs for a series of similar tables falls significantly, but may be increased where there are abnormally high overheads for complex tables. Customers will be informed before production starts if exceptions are likely to apply.
These revisions will not apply where a detailed estimate has been provided to a customer before 27 May and the specification is not subsequently changed by the customer.
ONS will provide advice about commissioned output and estimates of charges free to customers, but the order form for commissioned tables has been revised so that the customer agrees to meet all costs in the event of changes or cancellation of an order once production commences. Customer Services will check customers' intentions immediately prior to the start of production.
Customers are advised to check that their needs are not met by either the standard results or any previously commissioned tables. The standard area statistics table finder and the commissioned output table finder (both excel files - sizes 667kb and 2.11MB respectively) may help, as may the list of commissioned tables released between January and March 2008 provided HERE. The revised commissioned tables order form can be found HERE.
Census News
