Fees and Charges
Renfrewshire Council · 24 January 2024
Back to Infrastructure, Land and Environment Policy Board — 24 January 2024 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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1 _________________________________________________________________ To: Infrastructure, Land & Environment Policy Board On: 24th January 2024 ___________________________________________________________________ Report by: Director of Environment, Housing & Infrastructure __________________________________________________________________ Heading: Fees and Charges ___________________________________________________________________ 1. Summary 1.1 This report sets out as part of the Council’s financial sustainability strategy charges for Roads & Waste Services. The intention is for these charges to become effective from 1st April 2024. ___________________________________________________________________ 2. Recommendations It is recommended that the Infrastructure, Land and Environment Policy Board: 2.1 Approves the waste charges as set out in section 3 of this report. 2.2 Approves the roads charges as set out in section 4 of this report. ___________________________________________________________________ 3. Waste Services Bin Exchanges 3.1 There are currently no charges applied to households by the Council for exchanging bin infrastructure. To give context, the Council undertook the exchange of just over 4000 bins in the financial year 22/23, the Waste Service can no longer continue to provide this discretionary service at no cost. The proposal is to introduce a £25 per exchange to householders to cover the administration, handling, and delivery costs of providing this service.
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2 3.2 This will apply to all exchanges except for requests for larger blue or green bins in support of increased recycling by a householder and where there is an exemption from payment for those householders entitled to Severe Mental Impairment (SMI). Service Administration, handling & delivery cost Exchange of bins £25 Contaminated Bins – Housing Associations and Landlords 3.3 Waste Services receives several requests from Landlords and Housing Associations to uplift contaminated bins, there is currently no mechanism for charging for this. Costs for this service are escalating due to increasing number of requests, administration, and disposal costs. The Service proposes a charge of £15 per bin to cover these costs. Introducing a charge for this service will encourage these organisations to take proactive steps to ensure tenants comply with the recycling requirements. Waste Adviser Support will also be offered to those organisations making regular requests for this service. Service Administration & disposal cost Uplift of contaminated bins £15 Bulky waste collections (Special Uplifts) 3.4 Waste Services provide a bulky waste collection (Special Uplift) service where residents can request large bulky items to be uplifted from outside their property. The council currently charges £37.15 for a domestic uplift (1-20 items) and £37.15 for each domestic white good. There is also a ground clearance service charge at £88.00. This offering has been applied in the scenario where more than 20 bulky items are sought for collection for up to an hour’s work. 3.5 Due to significant rises in vehicle operating and waste disposal costs, and, that there has been no corresponding uplift in the charge over the last few years, the service will implement a new pricing structure and charges. To ensure fairness the new pricing structure will have a graduated charge, the more items to be taken away, the greater the charge, see below for the new charging mechanism: - 3.6 The proposal is to introduce the following new pricing structure & charges: Resident Request Cost Up to 5 items or bags (excluding white goods & upholstered seating etc) £40 6 to 10 items or bags (excluding white goods & upholstered seating etc) £70 11 to 20 items or bags (excluding white goods & upholstered seating etc) £120 White Goods – per item £45 Every Item or bag over 20 items (per item or bag) £8
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3 4. Road Construction Bond Rates 4.1 Further to the report to the Infrastructure, Land and Environment Policy Board in January 2023 outlining charges for roads related charges, the service has reviewed its approach to the calculation of roads construction consent fees for new housing developments where the developers construct new roads. The Council requires to inspect new roads as they are being developed in order to ensure they are built to the correct specifications to be adopted at a later date, in line with our recently approved Roads Adoption Policy. 4.2 The mechanism used to charge for inspection fees is currently based on 2% of the total road bond placed with the Council as part of the development proposals. The road bond figure that makes up this 2% is currently built up on the basis of 2009 roads material rates and as such is significantly out of date. Officers have updated these rates to today’s market rates, which means that the road bond figure for each development will increase significantly. In addition, it is proposed that a 3% figure is applied rather than 2%, calculated using the current market rates for roads materials. These rates will now also be reviewed on an annual basis in line with the annual review of our Roads Adoption Policy. _________________________________________________________________________________ Implications of the Report 1. Financial – The proposals will allow the Council to recover the costs for providing the services outlined above. 2. HR & Organisational Development -. None 3. Community/Council Planning – None 4. Legal – None 5. Property/Assets - None 6. Information Technology - None 7. Equality & Human Rights - None 8. Health & Safety - None 9. Procurement - None 10. Risk - None 11. Privacy Impact - None 12. Cosla Policy Position – None
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4 13. Climate Risk – None but the implementation of the charge in 3.3 will improve recycling. _________________________________________________________ List of Background Papers (a) Background Paper- None ___________________________________________________________________ Author: Gavin Hutton, Head of Operations and Infrastructure Email: gavin.hutton@renfrewshire.gov.uk