THE AMOUNT Merthyr Tydfil Council charges for its services is set to go up by 2.5% next year but some areas will see no change for now.
Councillors previously approved a fees and charges policy that stated that all non-regulated fees and charges set by the local authority should increase each year in line with inflation, based on the consumer price index inflation rate in the January before the start of the financial period, and for 2025/26 that figure is 2.5%.
But a report going before cabinet and full council on Wednesday, February 26, showed there were some areas that would fall outside of the agreed annual inflationary increase.
Social care charges might be reviewed after updated Welsh Government guidance was received, the report said.
For the council’s Lifeline service, which provides community alarms, there is no proposed increase for 2025/2026.
Monitoring charges were increased by 40% in 2024/25 along with the introduction of installation charges for new customers.
There is no proposed increase in respect of Lifeline for 2025/26 with the focus being on keeping existing customers and increasing the market share to improve commercial return.
No changes are proposed to taxi licensing fees and charges at the moment.
The approach to taxi licensing fees and charges is driven by a cost recovery tool-kit that all councils use and the report said there was disparity between benchmarked figures indicating differences in the way that the tool-kit was used by different councils.
Work is set to be done in the coming months on how to use the tool-kit in the most appropriate way and it was proposed that there were no changes to taxi licensing fees and charges until this piece of work had been done.
Building control fees are also set to not increase at the moment.
The report said building control fees and charges needed to be calculated in line with regulations to set the fees moving forward which the report said was an “extensive exercise” that needed consideration over the coming months.
It is proposed that no changes to building control fees and charges take place until this piece of work has been finished.
A review is currently being carried out on existing fees and charges for cemetery services and this is due to be finished at the end of the month.
The report said that maximising income from fees and charges was not the main aim for the authority and that some services would not be able to fully recover costs because of the impact that might have on residents.
The report said there was an important balance to be struck between affordability for residents and reasonableness of charging, to ensure that the council was making appropriate use of public funds and protecting services that might be unsustainable without appropriate cost recovery mechanisms in place.
The report said fees and charges were being reviewed by each service area and comparisons made to other neighbouring authorities’ fees and charges.
These are used to establish a benchmark with existing Merthyr Tydfil levels to check for any anomalies and, where appropriate, increases over and above the annual inflationary increase.
Some fees have been increased in line with Welsh Government guidance, to reflect the increasing cost associated with these fees and linked to inflation or or had been established regionally, the report said.
Other areas will be held at existing levels or will have increases below the rate of inflation in order to maintain commercial competitiveness or to keep and grow their customer base.
The report said there were several fees and charges which were outside of council control and these would be updated as and when the council had confirmation of changes during the financial year.
