Budget Planner Update
Budget Planner Update
12th May, 2025
Employers National Insurance Increase and Grant Methodology
As previously advised, the original budgets have not included the Employers National Insurance (NI) increase, so for the month of April all staff records will indicate a variance. We are unable to provide what we expect the variance would be across all staff as this varies based on the salary of each employee.
We will be releasing the NI increase to the budget planner on Monday 12th May at 9.00. If you wish to see how the NI increase has impacted your staffing costs, please print a summary version of the budget planner before completing the next stage.
To update the NI changes in the budget planner, please select the “Staffing Summary” icon from the main menu and then select the recalculation icon from the options along the top of screen. To update the NI change ready for revision 1, please then select the “Update Budget Plan” icon.
You can then print another summary version of the budget to see the impact of the NI update.
We would advise at this stage, to then select the black arrow from the main menu which will update the staffing details to the staff monitoring report in Star Accounts to enable more effective monitoring of your staff variances. (any variance would now indicate a true variance) This should be actioned before completing your period 2 download.
The government have provided funding to support the cost of the NI increase. Table 1 via section 4.2 of the grant methodology should be used when calculating the grant which should be added to your budget over all 3 years. A grant calculator tool has also been provided. This is for mainstream schools.
For Eary Years settings, please refer to table 1 via section 4.4 grant methodology for funding rates.
For Special Schools, please refer to section 4 CSBG funding rates which includes the element for NI. Please be aware that this will require a formal consultation, but we advise for budgeting purposes to include £496 per place until further information is provided.