Decision Maker: Cabinet Member for Hubs, Governance, Support Services, Heritage & Arts and Customer Care
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Is Key decision?: No
Is subject to call in?: Yes
Purpose:
1.
To request permission to increase the fees for
Private Citizenship Ceremonies from £42.00 to £60.00
and to introduce a reservation fee for Registration Office marriage
and civil partnership ceremonies of £30.00 (non refundable)
at the Registration offices (Chippenham, Salisbury and Devizes). The net effect
of these increases will be an additional £14,000 in this
financial year based on anticipated figures
Reasons for the decision:
1.
In order to mitigate the greater than anticipated
reduction in income to the Registration Service budget in
2010/11.
Alternative options considered:
- Closing outstations would release income but would affect the
service delivery to the population. Raising the fees on marriages,
civil partnership, approved venue, naming and renewal of marriage
vows ceremonies has been considered but having benchmarked against
neighbouring authorities Wiltshire is currently in the middle to
top quartile in cost.
- However, we have benchmarked the costs of Citizenship fees with
other local authorities including those around our borders and feel
that Wiltshire’s can be increased.
- The
service has been experiencing an increasing number of ‘no
shows’ for marriages in our ceremony rooms. This is wasteful
and costly if staff have been brought in
specifically to carry out the ceremony. Other registration services
have found that the introduction of a non refundable reservation
fee has helped to address this.
- Account has been taken of those who may be on low income and
unable to afford a reservation fee of £30.00 as well as the
statutory marriage fee of £43.50. Trowbridge is the County
Register Office and couples will be able to get married here
without paying the reservation fee. In
addition, in genuine hardship cases it will be possible for the
reservation fee to be waived for the other ceremony
rooms.
Other reasons / organisations consulted
- A
significant proportion of the Registration budget is balanced
through income derived from ceremonies provided for the
public. However, due to the current
financial climate, considerably fewer ceremonies are taking
place. When constructing the
10/11 budget account was taken of this declining trend and the
budget adjusted accordingly based on a ‘best guess’ of
predicted ceremonies that would take place.
- Work
has now taken place on income figures for 2010/11 based on the
anticipated budget income against our actual bookings and it shows
that these are lower again than predicted during the budget setting
process.
- Measures have been taken to contain the costs by not replacing a
Head of Service post and containing any non essential spend. Additional mechanisms for raising income are
being introduced such as chip and pin payments to increase the
flexibility for raising income on copy birth and death certificates
which also provides a better service to the public. However, this will still be insufficient to offset
the anticipated shortfall.
Contact: Jacqui White, Service Director Business Services 01225 713 013 Email: jaqui.white@wiltshire.gov.uk Email: jacqui.white@wiltshire.gov.uk.
Publication date: 13/07/2010
Date of decision: 13/07/2010
Effective from: 22/07/2010