Charging for some services will benefit the vulnerable
Vulnerable children and the elderly will be among those to benefit from the County Council’s plans to actively generate more income from some services, a Cabinet meeting was told yesterday.
Raising money is now crucial after the challenges caused by the Government’s recent decision to completely withdraw its grant to the authority, senior councillors heard.
But Leader Martin Tett and his Cabinet stressed that this strategy does not include trying to make a profit on the key services the Council is legally obliged to provide.
Instead, the extra income will come from other optional work the Council performs – and will then be used to support key services, including those provided for the vulnerable, the meeting was told.
Cabinet Member Warren Whyte said it was vital the public understood what the Council was doing in charging for extended optional services to enhance other key services.
He told the meeting: “I wouldn’t want residents to think that this Council wants to charge for everything because it can. It charges for certain things because they are optional or discretionary services to support the statutory services that we must deliver.”
One example of the new proactive policy centres around the Council’s plans to borrow money to buy Liscombe Park, an equestrian centre betweenSoulbury andWing. The Cabinet agreed in principle yesterday, subject to completion of checks, to borrow up to £1.7m to secure the purchase.
The idea is that taxpayers will make anet profit of around £32,000 per year from this because the rental income is £119,000 per year and there is a secure tenant on site. The investment is believed to be low-risk with a very high chance of a strong financial return. The Council already brings in extra money by charging on some services, but this policy will look to encourage far more income generation.
CllrTett, who told how the Council needed to save £53m over the next four years, stressed the authority was ‘desperately short’ of day-to-day money to employ people for services.
“As Government funding to the Council decreases very rapidly in the next four years, we need to find alternative sources of income that will come in year after year after year after year which we can use to pay staff and provide those desperately-needed services to residents, and that’s what this is about.”
He said the proposed Liscombe Park purchase was perhaps the first of a portfolio of investments that will build up and generate the ongoing income needed to maintain those services.
Cllr Tett said the Council was sometimes accused of ‘penny-pinching’, but added the reality was, it was the same pound generated in income that could be spent on protecting a vulnerable child or helping an elderly adult. “There is another side to the fees and charges that quite frankly the people who complain don’t recognise until they themselves or a relative might be in need,” he added.