Data used to work out 10% rise on taxi licensing costs
Case reference FOI2023/00691
Published 11 May 2023
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act please provide the data that was used to work out the need for a 10% rise across the board on all taxi licensing costs passed on to the trade. You recently wrote "this financial work for this will be based upon facts and figures checked and audited by our accountants." We would like to see these facts and figures please.
Response
Under the Freedom of Information Act please provide the data that was used to work out the need for a 10% rise across the board on all taxi licensing costs passed on to the trade. You recently wrote "this financial work for this will be based upon facts and figures checked and audited by our accountants." We would like to see these facts and figures please.
A 10% increase was decided by the Council to cover all chargeable fees, to ensure that inflationary pressures were addressed.
As licensing costs cannot exceed income, the Council's officers and accountants initially checked that the charges made for all licences, including taxi and private hire, remained within these parameters before this figure was adopted by the service.
To establish this the Council took into account the cost of running the service, which includes both salary and overhead costs. Further work was then undertaken to break down the costs of individual licences to ensure that appropriate costs were charged, depending on the transaction in question.
The attached spreadsheet demonstrates that even with the 10% increase, the cost of the service is not achieving full cost recovery and falls below the full costs of operating it. The fee we are charging for a new Duel Driver Licence (DDL) this financial year, for example, is £393.00.
Documents
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