Issue - items at meetings - Corporate Fees & Charges Policy

Report of the Director of Finance & Resources (copy attached).

1.       That the contents of the report be noted.

2.       That the proposed Corporate Fees & Charges Policy, as detailed in Appendix 1 to the report, should come into force for the 2009/10 budget setting cycle for proposals to change fees and charges (other than by inflation) and in full from the 2010/11 cycle as part of the Medium Term Financial Strategy, be agreed.

3.       That the report be referred to Cabinet for information.

42.1    The Cabinet Member considered a report of the Director of Finance & Resources concerning fees and charges. The report updated the Cabinet Member for Finance about recent developments in relation to discretionary charging and the application of fees and charges. The report also recommended a Corporate Fees & Charges Policy (for copy, see minute book).

42.2    The Opposition Spokesperson accepted that fees should go up in accordance with inflation, but thought that there were areas where the raising of fees would prove difficult to sustain. He stated that he was against the general rearrangingof all fees and indicated that he and his colleagues in the Labour group were concerned with the proposed budget process outcome referred to in paragraph 3.18 of the report.

42.3    The Cabinet Member clarified that the Council needed to go through this process because the Government had introduced legislation (the Local Government Act 2003) to encourage Local Authorities to effectively review the application of fees and charges. In addition, the proposed policy was also in response to the Audit Commission’s recommendation of good practice.

42.4    The Assistant Director, Financial Services,further clarified that the policy encouraged services to be clear and explicit about the reasons for providing concessions and subsidies to services where fees and charges were applicable. He explained that the primary aim of the policy was to ensure a consistent and robust framework for reviewing fees and charges. The policy itself did not recommend specific fees or charging levels.

42.5    The Opposition Spokesperson referred to paragraph 3.2 of the report. He considered the sentence “charge for discretionary services if the recipient agrees” unclear and confusing. He felt that Members should be aware of what discretionary services and statutory services were, but there appear to not exist clear information about that.

42.6    The Head of Law clarified the sentence meant that people did not have to receive the service if they did not want to pay for it. The Head of Law recommended that officers reviewed the wording on the referred paragraph 3.2 in order to make the sentence clearer.

42.7    The Assistant Director explained that the council’s website provided information about what were discretionary and what were mandatory services. He accepted there were areas where the council was unclear about this matter, and this was one of the reasons why the review was appropriate.

42.8    The Cabinet Member asked officers to provide Cllr Hamilton with the various information he had requested.

42.8    RESOLVED – That, having considered the information and the reasons set out in the report, the Cabinet Member accepted the following recommendations:

(1)      That the contents of the report be noted.

(2)      That the proposed Corporate Fees & Charges Policy, as detailed in Appendix 1 to the report, should come into force for the 2009/10 budget setting cycle for proposals to change fees and charges (other than by inflation) and in full from the 2010/11 cycle as part of the Medium Term Financial Strategy, be agreed.

(3)      That the report be referred to Cabinet for information.