User fees and charges are one of the ways the Council can recover some of the costs of delivering an activity or service from its users, who directly benefit from the activity or service.
We charge fees to both residents and users of particular services. This helps to share the costs between the two groups. It’s known as the ‘user pays model’. However, sometimes, it’s hard to fi nd a perfect balance between the two. For activities that benefit the public more, like libraries and sports fields, the costs are mostly covered by general rates.
The Council regularly reviews fees and charges to ensure they reflect the true cost of providing services, as outlined in our Revenue and Financing Policy. A number of factors are considered when setting fees and charges, including indirect benefits to the community and distribution of benefits.
The following proposed changes are intended to ensure that service costs are accurately reflected:
- Building consent related charges are significantly increasing to cover the cost of delivering the service.
- The structure of how we charge resource consent fees is proposed to be updated to make it easier for the customer and provide more certainty on costs up front.
- Some increases to food and business operation charges to reflect the cost of the service.
- We have created a new fee for our priority infrastructure development advisory services.
- Waste charges are increasing to reflect the sticker and tag price changes we are proposing as part of the waste services delivery model on page 35.
- For major event fees we’ll be including the addition of 1.5 per cent of ticket sales and the base fee will also increase from $1,000 to $2,000 from 1 July 2027.
- The service connection fee for Pookeno and Tuakau has been updated based on services costs for trickle and non-trickle feed.
- Road naming process fees are increasing to reflect the cost of the service.
What's the process?
He aha te tukanga?
