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A local authority is set to make £300,000 by hiking parking charges and ending concessions for electric vehicles as it tries to balance its budget.
Maidstone council is also expecting to bring in £100,000 more in rental income from its Innovation Centre, but anticipates taking £68,000 less from units occupying Lockmeadow leisure complex, which it also owns.
The financial pressures and savings facing the borough were laid out to members as they went through the process of deciding what the coming year’s council tax demands should be.
Among the pressures is a demand from Kent County Council (KCC) that Maidstone pays it £100,000 a year for the privilege of enforcing on-street parking in the borough, which the borough does only under licence from KCC, the highways authority.
It was willing to pay the fee, since it will still generate a net profit.
Councillors were told an extra £133,000 would need to be spent to keep the borough’s toilets clean as the current contract was inadequate, while £25,000 was needed to support recycling by subsidising home composting bins and water butts.
The borough has seen some sources of income shrink.
It is expected to take £200,000 less from performing cremations at the council-owned Vinters Park crematorium, due to a lower death rate since Covid.
It will also lose out on £30,000 of income from planned improvements to the Medway Street car park, which have not materialised.
The council is also expecting to receive £27,000 less income from Cobtree Golf Course, which it part-owns, following a renegotiated contract with the operators.
Its £19m purchase of the Lockmeadow leisure complex in Barker Road in 2019 is also proving less profitable than hoped, with a number of empty units.
The council said it expected to re-let them, but that owing to changed market conditions, the leases would be at a lower rent than paid by the previous tenants - with the council expecting income to fall by £68,000.
However, the cost of waste collection is now expected to be less than originally anticipated. Lower inflation and slower growth in housing numbers have led the borough to expect savings of around £850,000.
But the fall-off in housing growth has also resulted in less demand for the council’s street naming and numbering service, provided to developers. As a consequence, it expects to receive £38,000 less income from this source than previously.
The council has taken the decision to remove a free parking concession in public car parks for the owners of electric vehicles, and this is likely to generate an extra £171,000 in income.
It is also planning on bringing in an extra £157,000 from off-street parking fees, after taking the decision to increase them by an average of 15%.
Earlier this year, KCC decided to end its financial support via “enabling payments” to borough councils to encourage waste recycling. The support had been worth £334k to Maidstone.
Now in a tit-for-tat exercise, the borough intends to start charging KCC “tipping away fees” for the county’s use of disposal sites outside the borough’s boundaries. The fees are expected to be worth around £100,000 to the borough.
Maidstone’s environmental health service has been run jointly with Tunbridge Wells and Swale councils.
For some time, the department had operated with a reduced headcount. The councils have now decided the staff numbers are sufficient for the workload, and so Maidstone’s contribution towards costs will be cut by £50,000.
The council also expects to see occupation rates improve at its borough-owned Innovation Centre on the Kent Medical Campus and it anticipates rental income will rise by £100,000.
When the council decides on its final budget, it will have to make allowance for payments that are not collected.
In previous years, that non-collection rate has been at around 1.5% of the total.
However, the borough is anticipating that to rise to 2.5% this year, because KCC is withdrawing incentive payments to all borough councils to assist in tax collection.
KCC had previously been supporting the Kent boroughs to the tune of £3.5m a year to help collection.
Maidstone says with fewer resources, it will be less effective in chasing non-payers.
Overall, this coming year, after also allowing for changes in housing numbers, the council will be looking to squeeze its revenue from a tax base that is actually 0.3% smaller than the current year.
Kent Online asked KCC about its intentions to charge the second-tier authorities for the privilege of enforcing on-street parking regulations.
A spokesman said: “High-level discussions are currently being had between KCC and the district and borough councils about the future operation of the on-street parking enforcement service.”