Council to increasefees for its services

In which case, you will soon have to pay more for the privilege.

Rother District Council has voted to increase fees for some of the services it provides - including a 10 percent hike in beach hut fees and a 2.3 percent increase in the cost of pitch hire.

And council charges for garden waste collections could be on the rise later in the year.

Councillors voted the increases through during a meeting of the full council on Monday.

The authority said an increase to the cost of beach hut licenses in 2014 had not had a detrimental effect on their take up, and there is still a healthy waiting list for the huts.

Rother says the service is currently being run on a cost-neutral basis but the introduction of licence transfer fees introduced last year brought in some extra income for the authority.

Rother District Council insists that its beach hut fees are ‘competitive’.

But the authority says it decided to raise the cost of the beach hut site licences by 10 percent to ensure the non-statutory service does not ‘become a burden on the Council Tax payer’.

Rother currently spends around £65,000 a year on providing sports pitches across the district.

The authority says that in order to make this a ‘cost neutral activity’, the price may be beyond the means of local clubs.

Fees are set to rise by 2.3 percent to match the increase in contract charges for the 2015/16 season.

Meanwhile Rother Council could soon start charging residents more to have their garden waste collected.

Those who subscribe to the service currently have to pay an annual charge of £25 per bin.

But the annual charge to the council currently stands at £31.72 per bin, meaning RDC subsidises each bin to the tune of £6.72.

Councillors have also voted to review the garden waste charges in the autumn in order to ‘allow the service to stabilise demand and monitor costs against income’.