Decision details

Cabinet had before it a report * from the Deputy Chief Executive (S151) Officer on the 2024/2025 Fees and Charges.

The Cabinet Member for Finance outlined the contents of the report with particular reference to the following:

·         Charges for Council services formed a key income stream for the Council totalling over £11m and enabled many discretionary services to continue to be provided and helped address the financial challenge the Council faced.

·         The Council charges fees for different reasons such as:

           They are set by statute such as planning.

           They recover costs (the Council adopts a full cost recovery policy)

           They support the provision of discretionary services. 

·         The setting of fees also helped to drive efficiency and customer behaviour and also ensured general taxation isn’t being used to subsidise certain services that are only used by a small proportion of people. All fees needed to be set within any overarching legal requirements and must consider equalities.

·         Following a full review, the majority of fees were proposed to be increased in line with September’s CPI inflation (6.7%). The September figure represented the mid-point for the year and was also the latest CPI available at the time of drafting the proposals for the various PDG’s to consider. It was also central Governments measure used when calculating national schemes such as pensions, business rates and grant increases. Where a service wished to vary from this, it had set out the justification to the relevant PDG.

There were currently several routes for approving the fees within the constitution, including; Cabinet or Cabinet Member decision, delegated decision by an officer, or by committees other than Cabinet.  Therefore the fees had been split into 2 appendices – with Appendix 1 requiring Cabinet approval. Appendix 2 provided the fees approved elsewhere and so was just for noting.  Some minor technical amendments and clarifications had been made within the supplementary update.

Discussions took place regarding:

·         The inflation uplift of 6.7%.

·         Venue hire and the meeting rooms in Phoenix House and Crediton Town Square facilities and guidance around this.

·         Political party using the facilities and how this would be dealt with.

·         The figures on Leisure were not the fees that were agreed at the Policy Development Groups.

·         Discrepancies in the charge of leisure for yoga fees that had been agreed at the Policy Development group and in the published minutes.

·         The proposal exceeded inflation and the justification for this had been presented to and supported by the relevant Policy Development Group in part 2.

·         The prices had doubled for example the swimming for juniors and concessionary was 14%.

·         The public were unable to see anything in part 2 and Members were not able to disclosure this information.

·         Motion 593, as agreed at Full Council, stated that the leisure fees would be reviewed in an open and transparent way.

·         The issues that arose last year in regards of fee increases.

·         Fees and Charges needed to be more open and transparent at the Policy Development groups when discussed.

RESOLVED that:

·         The proposed Fees and Charges from 1 April 2024 set out in Appendix 1 be agreed;

·         Delegated approval be given to the Deputy Chief Executive (S151) for discretionary fees to increase annually in the future in line with September CPI inflation, or potentially above annual inflation where the market will bear it following a review by the relevant Policy Development Group.

·         The proposed / agreed Fees and Charges in Appendix 2 which have / will be approved through alternative routes as outlined in Para 1.4 be noted.

(Proposed by Cllr James Buczkowski and seconded by Cllr S Keable)

Reason for Decision:

The Localism Act 2011 also provides local authorities with a general power of competence that confers on them the power to charge for services unless there is a statutory duty to provide the service or if there is a specific power to charge for it or if there is a prohibition on charging. Paragraph 1.6 outlines the three key principles for setting discretionary charges. The proposed fee uplifts are mainly inflationary. Therefore it is assumed that this will not have a material impact on the usage of that service. Any proposed uplift above inflation has been assessed by the service manager to again not materially alter the usage of the service.

Note * Report previously circulated.