CLOSED - 2023/2024 Fees and Charges and Annual Plan

Invercargill City Council wants to hear your views on its proposed fees and charges for the new financial year.

Council’s Fees and Charges are reviewed annually to ensure they reflect the cost of services being provided and an appropriate balance is maintained in funding activities through a balance of rates and fees and charges.

All the proposed changes can be found in the Fees and Charges Schedule for consultation under documents.

The main changes to Fees and Charges are reflecting the current market inflation, which means an increase of between 4.2% and 4.3% while some services have increased higher than the inflation to appropriately recover the costs to deliver services.

Some of the highlighted changes include:

- Planning and building services: Additional charges have been created for Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement activities for both the Building Act and Resource Management Act. This is to better reflect the cost of inspections and certification which wasn’t allowed for the initial fee and therefore encourage a fairer system for its compliant users.

- Waste services: Council is proposing to increase minimum fees at the Waste Transfer Station in order to move closer to a position of recovering costs. Minimum fees are planned to increase from $5 to $10. A significant portion of waste service fees are increasing in order to cover the costs Council and its contractors are required to pay to cover costs of the Emissions Trading Scheme levy and Waste Disposal Levy.

- Water services: Council has reviewed the cost of providing this service and determined that significant increases are required to bring the fees closer to the level of recovering costs. Council is proposing to increase the cost from 70c to $1 per cubic metre,

- Housing rents: Council provides a number of housing units for older and other vulnerable people. The rents of these units are set at a level to recover the costs of providing the units, including maintenance and replacement costs to ensure the quality of the units. As part of this process, Council is seeking feedback from the tenants on the proposed increase which will result in increases of between $7 and $9 a week.

New fees and charges will apply from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024.

Submissions are due by 5pm on 6 April 2023.

Do you have comments on the proposed changes for the 2023/2024 Annual Plan - You can read about these in the Council paper filed under documents. We are not consulting on the Annual Plan this year as there are no major changes but you are welcome to send us your feedback which we will share with the Councillors. Please email policy@icc.govt.nz