It is proposed to increase the core commercial prices (for room hire, activities etc) by approximately 6% to help increase the revenue generated from commercial services.

Some purely commercial lines, such as stage equipment hire and commercial listing guides, have been benchmarked against operations in the region and re-aligned to better reflect current commercial rates.

The core library charges for book reservations and late fees are not planned to be increased so that library use isn’t discouraged (as it is still in the recovery phase after the pandemic), and due to the nature of the scale of the charges (either 1p or 12p per day) a small percentage charge would not be applicable. The research fees, however, are planned to be increased by a small fiscal amount of 50p to £1.50. Some larger % increases are for additional services, such as photocopying or printing, however the actual fiscal increase is 5p for these services.

We believe the alignment of the charges to more commercially viable rates will increase revenue without decreasing demand. The majority of prices have not been increased for approx. 3 years; therefore the current increase is necessary in order to bridge the gap caused by increasing costs over this period.

Publication date: 15/04/2024
Date of decision: 15/04/2024
Date comes into force if not called in: 24/04/2024
Call-in deadline date: 23/04/2024