Councillor Joanna Biddolph, speaking at the Hounslow Borough Council meeting on the council's budget, noted that increases in the council's fees and charges would hit the less well of the most.
You can watch the debate on Hounslow council's YouTube channel. Cllr Biddolph's speech on fees and charges starts at 01.55 mins in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtXTARnc7So
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
I would like to talk mostly on fees and charges but if I could just pick up on a couple of points that have been made today.
If Cllr Usa Chaudri wants to criticise us for talking, we've had laughter and all sorts this evening, but I also, just to let you know, you can't take the moral high ground because throughout my motion on damp and mould, the cabinet member for housing was talking to a colleague next to her.
Secondly, we supported your white ribbon campaign, and thank you for that, but we made the point that we shouldn't exclude men who are also subject to violence. And I would like to raise the point about homophobia again. We do not have a good enough policy in place to tackle homophobic attack and you must move on that. Four years of abuse is too long.
Thirdly, i'm very pleased that the big skip idea is already being progressed. But your words were "pulling together an action plan for a pilot. That's not a policy in place. That's just an internal process. It's been piloted in Wandsworth over several years. You could just go with that scheme, which is what we've based ours on.
But, back to fees and charges ...
First, a thank you – to the finance team, led by Clive - for retaining the comparatives: current charge and proposed charge, which was a change I asked for several years ago.
I still consider the list of fees and charges is overly complex and organised by council department, not service or need.
I think it also needs three more columns: the number of charges purchased, the amount raised and the percentage increase or decrease for the most recent year. Because it is impossible to tell which of the charges has a significant value – to residents and businesses, and to the council – and whether increases deter purchases and therefore the need for, or attractiveness of, the service.
To move on ...
You won’t be surprised to hear, given my work through the Chiswick Shops Task Force - and as retail spokesman for our group - that I’m glad to see that some fees and charges for retailers have not been increased as our traders are still struggling to recover from the pandemic which followed a previously tricky retail climate.
However, I am disappointed that the fees for markets and street stalls have not increased as they have a significantly damaging effect on bricks and mortar shops. I know this from analyses done by bricks and mortar traders.
A weekend market organiser pays £125.46 for a licence for six months plus £13.52 a market day. That means that the cost to the organiser is £34.43 per market day. Meanwhile, a café or restaurant has to pay many thousands a year in rent and rates, insurance, utilities, on health and safety measures and more. The square footage of a market is much larger than most cafes, shops and restaurants; the business rates bill would be huge as would be the rent.
These fees and charges are wrong and do not help councillors achieve one of our important roles, emphasised in member development training this year: “to promote and champion local economic growth in the borough so we can retain more business rates locally”. Markets and street stalls do not pay business rates yet they put business rate paying businesses at risk.
Additionally, many markets bring in traders from outside the borough, and outside London, which means - and this was the point that you made, Cllr Meah - that the Hounslow pound doesn’t stay in Hounslow. Yet retaining the Hounslow pound is one of the council’s aims - as reinforced by you this evening, Cllr Meah. Instead, the Hounslow pound is driven out of the borough to be spent miles away. That’s a double-whammy risk to business rate-payers.
I’m also very concerned about the increases in charges for leisure activities. We should not deter activities such as a family swim – up by nearly 10%.
The cost of dying in the borough - that’s going up by around 10% too.
There are also some enormous increases, where costs were zero. For example, reopening a brick grave for a resident is now £913 and for a non-resident is now £2,738, up from nothing. Why wasn’t there a charge before and why is that failure of planning not changed incrementally rather than increased by a sudden massive hike?
I’m glad to see that the cost of PCNs hasn’t increased. After all, at the current rate per fine, for the council, is raking in millions from unwanted road closures that are confusing and badly signed, tricking drivers into being fined.
Mr Mayor, in the most recent overview and scrutiny meeting, at which this budget was on the agenda, I made the point that our residents are dealing with the cost of living crisis by turning down their thermostats, reducing the hours their heating is on, sleeping under and wearing many layers – and I asked what the council was doing as an equivalent, by trimming its costs.
We know it isn’t. Instead, we have an overdraft budget – and increases in fees and charges that will hit the less well off the most.
Mr Mayor, Cllr Rajawat's budget is tone deaf. It's tone deaf to the needs of residents and business ratepayers. I'm not proud of that.
