Issue - meetings

Fees and Charges 2023/24

Meeting: 17/01/2023 - Overview & Scrutiny Panel (Item 426)

426 Fees and Charges 2023/24 pdf icon PDF 75 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Chris Blundell introduced the report and made the following points:

 

·  The proposals in the report had been considered by Cabinet on 12 January 2023;

·  A 10% broad increase in fees and charges was being proposed for approval by Council;

·  This increase was largely linked to high inflation and in order to recover the costs to services that were being delivered by the council;

·  Officers were still working on providing additional fees and charges for car parking that would make it easier to identify fees for each car park;

·  In 2021/22 Mill Lane raised £100k, Royal Harbour raised £170k and all the other car parks had a total of £1.63million;

·  During the pandemic period Mill Lane raised £75k. This was largely due to the staff car park income;

·  In the past these budgets were not aligned properly;

·  Proposing a 10% was not an easy decision to make;

·  It was worth noting that Council was not allowed to increase fees and charges in order to plug a budget gap. The intention should be to change the behaviour of residents.

 

Nick Hughes, Committee Services Manager explained to Members that having made an interest declaration, they could make their statements regarding the item for debate and then leave the Council Chamber until after a decision had been made by the Panel.

 

Members made comments and asked questions as follows:

 

·  The proposed purchase of the multi storey car park was welcome news. Did the £3million include costs for the refurbishment;

·  One Member said that the Labour Group was not happy with the proposed 10% increase in fees and charges for car parks. The Group was still working on their own proposals;

·  Would the Bulky and Green Waste work as intended, which would be to reduce flytipping occurrences in parts of the district?

·  There were also occurrences were households would move houses and just dump unwanted stuff or household waste at undesignated spots;

·  Could the performance of both bulky waste and green waste be monitored to ascertain the impact on flytipping?

·  Did the Safer Streets campaign which included collections of bulky waste in flytipping hotspots have the desired effect?

 

Chris Blundell and Penny Button, Head of Safer Neighbourhoods responded to Member comments and questions as follows:

 

·  The refurbishment to the multi storey car park was covered in the budget;

·  An officer response regarding the impact of the Safer Streets campaign would be sent out by email to Members after the meeting;

·  Green waste service demand might decrease due to the increased costs. However this was a service that residents would like to have as they valued it?

·  Car parking would most likely maintain demand even after the increased charges.

 

The report was noted.


Meeting: 12/01/2023 - Cabinet (Item 883)

883 2023/24 Fees and Charges pdf icon PDF 101 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Cabinet considered the proposed fees and charges for 2023/24, with the detailed fees and charges being provided in Annex 1 to the cabinet report. Due to the high inflation environment that Council was operating in, the Council had seen a substantial increase in its own running costs and the cost of the services that it provided. The Council’s services were funded from a broad range of income streams, with fees and charges being just one means of financing. 

 

However, other sources of income had reduced or been restricted in recent years, such as income from council tax and government grants. Given these income restrictions and the need to balance the budget, locally generated sources of income such as fees and charges were even more important than ever. It was important that the Council organised itself in ways that maximised income, whilst balancing this with managing the impact on residents and service users.

 

As such, the strategy in drafting the proposals had been to apply a broad 10% increase to fees and charges where possible, which was expected to generate additional income of £610,000 for next year’s budget. These proposals had been carefully reviewed by the cross-party Fees and Charges Cabinet Advisory Group (CAG) at its meetings on 6 October and 27 October last year. A number of recommendations had been made by the CAG for Cabinet’s consideration and where possible these had been reflected in the proposed fees and charges.

 

The following Members spoke under Council Procedure 20.1:

 

Councillor Everitt;

Councillor Yates;

Councillor Wing;

Councillor Garner.

 

Councillor David Saunders proposed, Councillor Jill Bayford seconded and Cabinet agreed the fees and charges schedule be updated to be based on a broad 10% increase, alongside the consideration of the recommendations made by the CAG (highlighted in paragraph 5.2 to the Cabinet report) and recommended to Council for approval.