This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordForecast and observation data were downloaded through the ECOMS user data gateway R‐interface (Santander Meteorology Group, 2015). Data and analyses (R‐code) can be requested from s.siegert@exeter.ac.uk.The decomposition of the Brier score into Reliability, Resolution and Uncertainty has become a standard method in forecast verification. In this note a very simple derivation of the familiar Brier score decomposition is presented. The Reliability and Resolution terms can be calculated as average Brier score differences between the issued forecast, the recalibrated forecast and the climatological reference forecast. The result suggests a simple way to calculate similar decompositions for arbitrary verification scores, and that recalibration methods and reference forecasts can be chosen more flexibly than is generally appreciated. A new decomposition of the continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) is proposed.Funding from the European Union Programme FP7/2007‐13 under grant agreement 3038378 (SPECS) is gratefully acknowledged.