Unused equipment

[michael]

Thank you all for your replies, obviously its not quite as easy as just selling the kit and putting the money in to the performing arts budget!

 

 

Michael

[AdrianLT]

Be very wary of trying to part-ex equipment in exchange for a lower price as Gibbothegreat has suggested. In any school or publicly owned venue, all capital equipment will be on an inventory and even if you do secure a good deal, you have still disposed of something without it being written off on the inventory. If you are the person responsible for the safe keeping of this equipment you could find yourself in very deep water for what has happened to 'missing assets'.

 

 

By Warning - An officer in our local authority lost his job over not having documented the disposal of old office furniture that no one wanted when he let a dealer take it away to save the cost of a skip. (Whilst he was acting in the best financial interests of his employer, it was still against the terms of the local government finance act so was a diciplinary matter).

 

As others have said - find a tame member of the finance team and get them to explain what the stumbling block is.

[paulears]

Indeed - saving the schoolmoney can be considered abuse of your position. Routinely, each year, I got three quotes for hiring radio equipment, then provided my own equipment at half the cheapest quote. I was happy with the modest income (especially as I could look after it) and I figured I was saving the college quite a bit of their budget. New Finance Director. Had a fit! I got told this was underhand, non-businesslike, and potentially a contravention of the college financial rules, in giving advantage to the college or staff by knowledge of quote details before placing an order. I can see how in some cases, this would be a potential fraud situation - but to me, this was daft.

 

So I got a choice provide my own quote based on no knowledge of the others, or keep out of it!

 

He also explained that if any of the people providing a quote had complained, then it could be gross misconduct by me - and the sack! I figured this applied to formal tenders, not quotes, but that's the deal put to me!

[chelgrian]

New Finance Director. Had a fit! I got told this was underhand, non-businesslike, and potentially a contravention of the college financial rules, in giving advantage to the college or staff by knowledge of quote details before placing an order. I can see how in some cases, this would be a potential fraud situation - but to me, this was daft.

 

If the college was in receipt of public money then you inherit a whole set of public sector procurement rules and eventually a set of EU rules start to apply. In actual fact most of the more bonkers rules don't apply to all places in receipt of public money or below certain thresholds which the hire of even an entire show's work of kit would fall under. However to make the bean counter's lives easier many rules are just applied universally instead.

 

Many of the rules are daft and either result in the lowest priced tender having to be accepted regardless of if you believe the company can actually deliver or the criteria on which the tenders are to be judged having to be set out in the documents and arguments about if your judgement about how well each tender matched to them was correct.

 

Fundamentally it's all such a nightmare that it's easier to let a single huge contract to a private enterprise who aren't bound by all of this stuff than it is to run lots of stuff in house. Of course the private enterprise is still bound by things like the Bribery Act 2010.

[Boggy]

To understand some of these rules, consider what could occur if dishonest people were able to sell school equipment.

I could imagine buying some nice gear, not using it for 2 years, listing it as faulty on eBay and getting my mate to buy it for me at a cheap price. I could imagine selling a bunch of gear to a second hand dealer who then gave me a very genereous discount on some gear they had that I wanted. I do like my freedom and would never consider participating in such deals but there are plenty of people who would.

When you have had a good look in this can of worms, it may make sense to simply ban the sale of gear and restrict the manner in which it may be disposed of.

[zonino]

First of all, check what Jivemaster said - no room to manouevre f the school doesn't actually own it! I have a similar restriction working for a local council - even if I do sell unused stuff, the income doesn't come back to me but goes to an entirely different budget. The way I've worked round that is part exchange, if you can find suppliers who will 1) give you a reasonable deal and 2) are willing to amalgamate the purchase into the sale price so that it simply appears as a failry cheap purchase on the paperwork, then you might have scope for extracting some value that way. I've found suppliers pretty willing to help out in that respect, haven't always found it that easy to get good part-exchange values, especially in the current economic climate, but frankly even a mediocre price for something unused is better than it sitting around cluttering the place up.

 

 

Speaking as someone who is about to finish 3 years as a school tech, don't bother. Unless you can arrange a moderately crafty part exchange, you won't get what you want. The finance system can't handle it, the bosses won't like it and it will cause far too much pain and stress.

 

If these items are required for teaching they will find money, in my experience schools are far from poor, they are just well controlled.

If they are required for extra curricular appeal to the head, governors and parents society, justifying why they will enrich the lives of the students or raise the profile of the school.

 

 

my bolds, in these type of situations (particularly if you've been told "no - you can't sell it"), it is highly likely it could be perceived as fraud even if you are not making any immediate personal financial gain

 

 

 

 

As others have said - find a tame member of the finance team and get them to explain what the stumbling block is.

 

this is definitely the best way to do it, preferably in the form of a business case (it doesn't have to be long, but it has to show a reason why buying/selling it will help the schools goals)

[J Pearce]

It definitely could come across as fraud, and I wouldn't do something like that without the approval of someone paid more than me!

I have had such a setup approved by a finance director, as they could see it was above board, the asset was old enough to have no residual book value and the part exchange better for us than cash in and then place order.