INFLATIONARY increases for some fees and charges made by BCP Council are likely to be applied by the end of the year.

Normally councils set their fees once a year and stick with it – but leader Drew Mellor says that with inflation now above 11 per cent these are exceptional times and a change in tack is needed if the council is to balance its books.

He promised there would be no surprises and no new fees for services which were not charged for before.

Councillors were told that inflation had already added around £25million to council costs with another £30m expected in the coming financial year, around ten per cent of the authority’s revenue budget.

Cllr Mellor said that despite the problems the council was still projecting an £8.8million surplus on its revenue budget for the current financial year.

He said generating a surplus was something which he said he could “100 per cent guarantee” despite scepticism from several opposition councillors at the place overview and scrutiny committee.

He told the committee that the council was currently seeking to update its charging policy to more accurately reflect inflation.

“If we don’t raise our prices they are being subsidised by the general taxpayer and we don’t think that’s right,” said Cllr Mellor.

“We are looking to bring in some inflationary price rises across our services and are doing more work on full cost recovery which will continue until January.”

He said the council was also looking to see how its delivered some services and if savings could also be found in those budgets, something which would form part of a public consultation.

Cllr Mellor said re-organisation of the councils from three into one had already saved £50million, which put the authority in a better position than most councils.

“As long as we continue with our diligent work we should be able to protect some of those vital services. There will be some difficulties in things we have to do, we’re working up the detail and will share it in the future,” he said.

Cllr Mellor said that he hoped the council would be able to avoid taking the £20million provisionally offered to it by the Government to pay for work in further transforming services following the beach hut recapitalisation idea being ruled out.

He said if sales on non-essential assets did not reach the target it remained possible that the council would take some of the Government money to bridge the gap, but said he wanted to avoid that.

“We are in regular dialogue but my view is that we should stand on our own two feet if we possibly can," Cllr Mellor said.