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How Much It Costs To Run Our Service
Building Control is a service that the Council is required to provide for the people of North Hertfordshire on a not-for-profit basis. There are private sector alternatives available offering some elements of what the Council does (plan checking and inspection service) and they directly compete with the Council for business. The income received by the Council for this is used to meet the costs of providing the service. It is recognised by the Council that competitiveness and quality of service are essential to keeping this business healthy.
As there is an open marketplace for this business, there is no comparative financial information available from the private sector to show how well we compete, either on price or cost.
So how does North Hertfordshire’s Building Control compare financially to other District Councils?
How much does Building Control cost?
In 2005/6 the whole service net cost was equivalent to £1.85 per citizen
How does that compare?
For Hertfordshire Councils costs ranged from £1.65 to £2.10
In 1999 each Council was able to set its own charges for applications and inspections. Our charges have been set to recover service costs and at competitive levels. The private sector will not publish their charges and so comparative information is not available.
So how do the charges we make for Building Control compare to other District Councils?
Based on charges made for a typical home extension
In North Hertfordshire our charge is £350
For Hertfordshire Council’s charges vary from £370 to £475 for the same project
In Essex Council’s charges vary from £390 to £470 for the same project
Income from charges contributes to the total cost of providing the service.
Summary
Our charges are very competitive, both compared to our neighbours and also in the region. Through the efficiency and quality of our service we are still able to achieve a proportionately high level of income per citizen for the Council.
Our income and work volumes show that we are maintaining competitiveness against the private sector providers. Locally and across the region Councils kept 92% of workloads to approved inspectors, whilst at North Hertfordshire we retained 97.4%
