Income from car parking in South Holland will top £400,000 for the first time in the next financial year with charges set to go up.
Drivers raised £381,000 in 2024/25 and the projected income will be £404,000 from the year starting in April.
By the year 2029/30 the authority’s income just from parking is put at £437,000.
The council’s budget projection is being presented to the council at a meeting due to take place today (Thurs).
“The projected budgets recognise an increasingly challenging and uncertain position through the five-year period of our financial strategy. The current financial environment requires a significant transformation in the way public services are both paid for and provided, with an emphasis on business and housing growth to both improve economic development and maximise funding to the council to help offset ongoing reductions in overall resources,” says the report.
The annual budget is presented ahead of the start of the new financial year, and it shows the cost of parking rising across the district.
Charges for one hour in car parks offering the option will rise from £1.20 to £1.30. While Sundays remain free, drivers will have to show a ticket.
All parking charges will be going up from April.
The council will also be increasing fees for most of its services.
In planning, the cost of making a householder application for alterations, extensions, garages, fences and gates (including domestic solar panels and wind turbines) will more than double from £258 to £528.
For two or more dwellings the fee rises from £509 to £1,043.
Charges for erecting agricultural buildings other than greenhouses, between 1,000 and 4,215sqm of new floor area will jump from £624 for the first 1,000sqm to £5,077 for the first 1,000sqm.
Applications for agricultural demolition/determination will double in price from £120 to £240.
Removal or variation of planning conditions for alterations or extensions to homes are currently free –but from April will cost £86.
If the removal or variation of condition relates to a major application, the cost shoots to £2,000.
Naming and numbering up to five new properties is currently capped at £120, with a £40 charge per plot. But from April the charge increases to £200 plus £25 per plot, with no cap.
Hirers of the South Holland Centre will be charged for a raft of things from borrowing a computer to using a smoke machine.
Many of the services are currently free, but ‘cost SHC in wear and tear or staff time,’ says the report.
Using a Macbook Pro computer will cost £20 a day while the smoke machines are £55.
The Orchestra Package Production for a week is £360 and includes a range of services.
Using a sound engineer along with two microphones and computer playback on Sundays or Bank Holidays will incur a £450 charge from April. Using a radio microphone comes in at £55 while a projector will cost £95.
Some of the costs now divided into separate elements may have been included in a ‘package’ provided by the centre, but the report makes it clear they are new charges.
The price increases come alongside the usual rise in council tax from April.
The district precept is going up 2.99 per cent, taking its share of the bill of a Band D home to £208.53 a year.
The county council’s element of the tax will also rise by 2.99 per cent, but sees it taking £1,625.85 a year. The police commissioner will take an extra £14, for a total of £318 per year from the tax. Parish precepts or special expenses (£23.13 in Spalding) will have to be added to the final council tax bill.
Today’s meeting follows the news this week of a higher than expected rise in the energy cap by 6.4 per cent from April 1.
l The same meeting will be told that a recent consultation on the budget proposals held at the beginning of the year had 51 electronic responses.
Among suggestions were reviewing the waste and recycling rounds as ‘they have not worked since the last review. Stopping council staff working from home and abolishing flexi-time were also put forward.
