Contents

  1. Issues of the medium term financial strategy
  2. Medium term financial strategy
  3. Change in financial planning assumptions
  4. Budget pressures, growth, inflation, council tax and business rates
  5. Collection fund
  6. Fees and charges
  7. Risk Strategy
  8. Reserve and contingency strategy
  9. Transformation
  10. Capital programme
  11. Treasury
  12. Strategy milestones
  13. Risk and mitigation measures
  14. Comments of the director of finance and corporate services
  15. Comments of the monitoring officer
  16. Summary of legal implications

6. Fees and charges

The Council will seek to generate additional income by reviewing discretionary fees and charges and opportunities to increase other income.

Bexley has very low sales, fees and charges income of £179 per head, compared to the nearest neighbour average of £379 per head (November 2024).

Sales, fees and charges as a proportion of gross expenditure was 11.00%, which is below the nearest neighbour average of 15.00%. This applies to all service areas except Adult Social Care, Cultural and Related Services, Highways and Transport which have an average cost compared to the nearest neighbours.

The Medium Term Financial Strategy currently makes no change to the planning assumptions previously reported, except for the inclusion for 2029/30.

The current planning assumptions are shown in the following table:

 2026/27 (£m)2027/28 (£m)2028/29 (£m)2029/30 (£m)
Income increases – planning assumption reported to Cabinet February 20250.3210.6500.983-
Inclusion of 2029/30   1.323
Revised planning assumption0.3210.6500.9831.323

The Medium Term Financial Strategy currently assumes income budgets increase by 2.00% in 2026/27, although actual fees and charges increases for 2026/27 will vary depending on the type of service and will be modelled throughout the year and reported to the required Committee in due course.