Undertaking a Fees and Charges Review

Our work across multiple Councils has shown that although benchmarking is part of the picture, undertaking an organisation wide Fees and Charges review can deliver even greater benefits and ensure a consistent approach across the Council.

Our approach focuses on the following:

• Developing a policy framework – developing and bringing a life an organisation wide Fees and Charges Policy that supports an “eyes wide open” approach to price setting 
• Embedding tools and techniques – customising our Fees and Charges toolkit, which includes a range of tools including those to support understanding of full cost, price sensitivity, trend analysis and legislative considerations and working alongside Councils to embed the toolkit to enable the Council to carry out further work internally
• Collaborating with services – undertaking “deep dives” with identified service areas to use a range of evidence to provide challenge to services and then work together to develop proposals that are ultimately owned by the service, with the intention of forming part of budget proposals
• A consistent, transparent approach to Governance and decision making – developing a “one stop” approach that sets out pricing decision, their link to policy and the legislative considerations that can be approved at Council or via the relevant decision making body, removing Governance duplication and confusion

Our approach delivers real results, that make a significant contribution both to the financial position of the Council and also support a culture of strong, eyes-wide open and evidence based price setting.

Alongside “traditional” fees and charges areas such as Leisure, Waste and Licensing we also cover a broader remit and have a track record of using our expertise to identify significant additional income in areas that are often “off limits” such as Adults Charging and Childrens services and applying our principles into broader traded services.

The Fees and Charges reviews deliver a very strong return on investment, with the average payback period being just 5 weeks after implementation.  Specific examples are:

• Nottingham City Council - £2.1m pa (rising to £3m pa in year 2)
• South Gloucestershire Council - £1.6m pa (rising to £3.5m pa)
• Peterborough City Council - £1m pa
• Middlesbrough Council - c£1m pa
• Nottinghamshire Districts - £200-500k pa per District
• A London Borough - £2m pa (rising to £5m pa)

We use a range of evidence and seek to challenge existing perceptions, examples of evidence used to develop strong, deliverable proposals are:

• Understanding of costs, with a particular emphasis on calculation of full cost
• Benchmarking, including analysis of a variety of comparable groups (wide range of Councils, other public or private sector providers)
• Market evidence and analysis
• Local and regional demographic information
• Learning from elsewhere
• Legislative position (noting we are not lawyers, so can not give legal advice)
• Analysis of link to policy objectives