Purpose

The report proposes an aggregated 8% price increase for commercial services at the Library service and The Atkinson in order to meet increased costs, specifically in utilities, NNDR and staffing.  Although services such as late fines are not being increased.

Decision

Decision(s): That

(1)

the proposed price increases of circa 6% be approved;

(2)

the current prices of certain key community activities be maintained;

(3)

the online booking fee to £1.75 be increased by 25p; and

(4)

photocopying charges be increased by 5p.

Reason(s) for the Decision(s):

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,  a notable item here is piano tuning where the costs to us have increased dramatically so we are forced to levy a charge increase of 219% (total cost of £280) in order to cover the cost of this externally provided service.

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.  Some larger % increases are for additional services, such as photocopying or printing, however the actual fiscal increase is 5p for these services.

It is further proposed to increase the online booking fee at the Atkinson by 25p, although this is 17%.  This still represents good value when compared to the Liverpool Empire at £3.95 per booking or Chorley Little theatre at £1.65 per booking, in the last 12 months we have had over 40,000 people book online therefore this would generate nearly £10k of gross revenue for the Atkinson.

We believe the alignment of the charges to more commercially viable rates will increase revenue without decreasing demand. 

Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

Maintaining the current pricing structure will negatively impact on the ability of the service to cover costs of provision.