[Open-climate-science] [wdmmg-discuss] Coal health compensation in COINS (fwd)

[Lisa Evans]

For those in this group interested in a sensible discussion of the costs 
of our energy system, you can see we have started looking into the costs 
in COINS:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:32:03 +0100
From: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
To: Where does my money go? <wdmmg-discuss at lists.okfn.org>
Subject: [wdmmg-discuss] Coal health compensation in COINS

Lisa just tweeted http://twitter.com/wdmmg/status/16879557050 about
the new  totals functionality and gave as an example this item on
"Coal Health Compensation Liabilities":

<http://coins.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/facet/total?data_type=Forecast+Outturn+December&budget_boundary=AME&account_code=51411400&programme_object_code=P661A005>

As I explain below, after a bit more digging I discovered the
following (modulo caveats below):

   * For 2008 actual expenses (Outturn) were twice those scheduled in plans
   * 2009 data looks like isn't complete yet -- or else is dramatically
lower for unknown reasons (NB: moving to Forecast Outturn April makes
little difference to amount here)
   * We spent closely to £100m pounds in 2008 on "Coal Health
Compensation Liabilities"
   * It would be nice to know exactly what this was ... (which takes us
back to our FOI effort related to the POGs ...)

Rufus

PS: I've also pasted this info as a comment now that we have
commenting on coins site ...

## More Info

Lisa's link gave the following figures:

Year	Amount
2009	£3.156m

However I immediately noticed this was for "Forecast Outturn
December", a quick fix in the url to show me Plans gives me:

<http://coins.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/facet/total?data_type=Plans&budget_boundary=AME&account_code=51411400&programme_object_code=P661A005>

Year	Amount
2008	£47.648m
2009	£1.515m

And outturn gives me:

<http://coins.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/facet/total?data_type=Outturn&budget_boundary=AME&account_code=51411400&programme_object_code=P661A005>

Year	Amount
2008	£91.944m
2009	£1.515m

Things to worry about:

   * DECC is new: was there a PO/POG for this in some other department
before DEC took it over?
     * This is one of the "nightmares" of COINS and to solve it (if we
can at all) requires looking at the adjustments tables -- something
no-one really seems to have done so far ...
   * Other budget boundaries (e.g. DEL) and POG versus PO. However,
I've checked and no spending on this item seems to be in DEL (it's all
AME) and also that this PO is the only item in the relevant POG (i.e.
moving up to POG makes no difference to totals)

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