Issue - meetings

Report to follow

Cabinet discussed proposals for the 2024/25 fees and charges. The fees and charges proposals were originally presented to Cabinet in October 2023 as part of the main budget report in order to support the 2024-25 budget setting process and were subsequently taken to the Overview & Scrutiny Panel earlier this month. Work undertaken looked to ensure that charges would remain competitive and that income budget expectations were realistic, allowing the Councils to manage existing shortfalls of actual income against budget.

Members of the Overview & Scrutiny Panel were made aware of the fundamental changes to Cabinet’s assumptions around fees and charges; these being a review of the fee increase and where possible, bringing these nearer to 5%. As a result the budget for 2024/25 now included the allocation of £116k to help facilitate this. The revised annex to this report, being the detailed schedule, was not available for that Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting and the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Services indicated to members of the Panel that it would be brought to Cabinet at the end of January for consideration. The main changes related to parking, bin replacement, garden waste and the crematorium.

At the Panel, there were comments made around community events charges. Cabinet confirmed that as per the annex to the report, the application fees for community events, together with the day-rate costs for community, charity and commercial events have been frozen. This meant that there was no increase in these community event costs. However, given the difficulty splitting out parking charges for events from wider parking fees and charges, the suspension of parking bay charges for events could not be frozen for community events.

Councillor Austin spoke under Council Procedure Rule 20.1.

Cabinet agreed to recommend the fees and charges as set out in the report to Full Council for approval.

Matt Sanham, Head of Finance and Procurement led the discussion and said that inflation levels had decreased and the fees and charges had been reviewed taking into consideration the changes to inflation levels.

Members made comments and asked questions as follows:

• Would the Council consider suspending charges for parking bays during events?
• Event organisers were made to pay for non-paying parking bays. Why was that the case?
• Did the Council keep the profit they received from charging event organisers or was all the income forwarded to KCC?
• There was a need for the Council to review events and come up with a heritage stratum of events so that such events were not charged a high fee.

Matt Sanham and Councillor Yates responded as follows:

• All on-street parking income belonged to KCC;
• Unfortunately, there were instances when event organisers were charged for a full day;
• Cabinet was considering those issues and discussions were on-going;
• The Portfolio Holder would ensure that charges for events would not be increased.

Members noted the report.

Report to follow

Members debated proposals for the Fees and Charges for 2024/25. These proposals were presented to Cabinet in October as part of the main budget report in order to support the 2024-25 budget setting process. The review of fees and charges commenced in the early summer and proposed fees and charges were then received by Cabinet in October for recommendation. These projections were based on a broad 8%, which was based on inflation as of June 2023. This was expected to generate additional income of around £350k.

Work undertaken looked to ensure that charges would remain competitive and that income budget expectations were realistic, allowing us to manage existing shortfalls of actual income against budget; expected income growth from fees and charges for the forthcoming year excluded items such as Selective Licensing, On Street Parking and specific growth items covered elsewhere in the budget. Since this report was presented in October, inflation had reduced to nearer 4% and as a result Cabinet took the opportunity to review the fees and where possible, bringing these to nearer to 5%. The budget for 2024/25 being proposed now included the allocation of £116k to help facilitate this. As a result of this work, it had not been possible to provide the revised annex to this report this evening. This information would be brought to Cabinet meeting for consideration towards the end of January.

The following Members spoke under Council Procedure Rule 20.1.

Councillor Davis;

Councillor Rattigan;

Councillor Wing.

Councillor Yates proposed Councillor Whitehead seconded and Cabinet agreed the following:

1.  To consider the fees and charges as set out and agree to receive an updated schedule at its meeting on 25 January 2024 to form the basis of its recommendation to Council for approval.