The Cabinet Member Corporate Services and Education presented the report and made the following points:

·         A consistent approach to cost recovery and increasing income generation needed to be adopted through corporate charging principles.

·         Work undertaken on traded services to schools had identified proposals of £1.9m relating to existing income streams.  There was a need to mitigate against the risk of lost income from academy schools.

·         Benchmarking against other authorities indicated that Herefordshire was in the lower quartile in terms of income generation, indicating there was scope to generate additional income to offset budget pressures.

The Chairman invited the vice-chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to address cabinet.  The vice-chairman stated it was important the report reflected the true cost of services across all areas as they currently were.

The Independent Group Leader and the It’s Our County Group Leader both raised concern over the increase in charges to the public and were advised that car parking charges had not been increased in three years.  The issue of council staff car parking was raised in relation to public perception. Cabinet was advised that this was already under review.

Cabinet noted that in a benchmarking analysis Herefordshire was in the lowest quartile for income generation through chargeable services and also for salaries.  Cabinet agreed that any changes proposed would need to be considered carefully and that a county-wide parking policy was required.

RESOLVED

That:

a)          the charging principles contained at Appendix 1 to the report be approved;

b)          the proposals in relation to car parking and planning advice charges contained in the report be approved and authority be delegated to the Director for Places and Communities to finalise the schedule of fees and charges to be applied within the principles agreed;

c)          the proposals in relation to school transport and adult social care charges contained in the report be approved and authority be delegated to the Director for People’s Services to finalise the schedule of fees and charges applied within the principles agreed; and,

d)          Overview and Scrutiny Committee, through the Vice-Chairman Corporate Services, undertake a review to identify options for the development of budgetary policy to support further income generation.