Thread by @AlysGreens

Today, a joint @EdinburghGreens & @EdinburghSNP amendment on Fees & Charges PASSED🥳 freezing:
🍃Garden Aid
🪦 Burial charges
🧓Day care charges for older and disabled people
📳Emergency alarms and Telecare
📚Some library fines
And allocating 100k for a community cultural fund

This happened at a special Finance & Resources Committee Meeting today where we've been discussing and agreeing the fees that @Edinburgh_CC charges for everything from parking through to picture licensing.
Papers and webcast available here: and🧵below 👇democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieListDocument…

But wait, I hear you say, I thought Fees & Charges were part of the budget process?
Well, me too.
But this year the budget process has been a bit odd all round; because the Lib Dem budget passed somewhat...unexpectedly, there were still some unanswered questions to go through.

But wait, I hear you say again, I thought Council was in recess?
Well, me too.
But because of these unanswered questions, a paper was initially tabled at Full Council last month, where the Greens and SNP brought an amendment to change some of the listed Fees & Charges.

Labour didn't like this, because they said they hadn't had enough time to think about it and bring an amendment themselves (go figure). So we had to have a special Committee meeting instead. And because this had to happen before the fees kick in on April 1st, it had to be today.

It being recess, it was pretty quiet in the chambers today though, which did give me the chance to try (and fail) to get an arty photo of myself working in the fancy members lounge.

But enough about why the meeting happened, what actually when on during it?

The paper we were discussing was pretty similar to the Lib Dem’s original proposals – seeing an 11.1% increase on most things, except where the officer recommendation was to go above this (mainly parking charges). It meant fairly big increases in 'poverty-related' charges.

Both us (along with the SNP) and Labour had amendments to this paper, suggesting that on-street parking charges (not resident parking permits or trade parking permits) should be higher. Labour wanted an increase of 16%, we were suggesting 20%.

This both recognises that parking charges have been artificially low for far too long, and helps reduce car use in Edinburgh – improving our air quality, making our roads safer, and of course reducing our climate impact. It also raises income to enable us to freeze other charges.

Again, there was some commonality here with labour. They had also included a freeze on garden aid fees, burial charges, & home care for older people and disabled adults.
This was great to see - it meant whatever happened we would see some progressive changes to fees & charges.

But the additional £0.8m that we were generating with a 20% increase also allowed us to propose freeze charges for alarms and telecare services, improve access to libraries, and create a community cultural fund.

We were really surprised that Labour didn’t include anything on libraries in their amendment. Their original budget proposal had included removing all library fines, which they had spoken passionately about, so we assumed they would try to tackle library fines at this meeting.

We had explored the option of doing away with library fines in our own amendment but decided that – this year at least – it wasn’t the best use of £185k and instead proposed freezing of some borrowing fees and creating a debt amnesty.

Owing money to the library can create barriers to people accessing these community spaces for learning, leisure, job searches and – increasingly – as a warm & welcoming space. A debt amnesty means we can wipe out any debt which is keeping people from fully using our services.

Finally, our amendment included £100k for a community cultural fund. Despite the fact that there are discounts for charities & community groups, far too many worthwhile projects are being priced out of accessing council-owned venues by increased rates.

This initiative will help us guard against losing valued voluntary groups simply through the lack of affordable rooms to rent, and we hope it will help groups to thrive and continue doing great work in the community.

It’s so exciting that both the cultural fund and the debt amnesty will now be happening, and we’ll be working with officers on getting them up and running asap.
Huge thanks to @lmacinnessnp and @Alex4Craig_Dudd for their work and partnership on the amendment!

Our amendment passed by 5 votes (us and the SNP) to 4 (Labour and the Lib Dems). In the end, the Conservatives proposed the motion unamended, and then abstained from the final vote.

Seeing as we had a special meeting arranged, it was no surprise that a few additional papers slipped in, so we also discussed work on the Council’s medium term financial plan, and some contract issues for the tram works.

The final paper was about a digital transformation strategy for health and social care – this is a vital issue and nobody on the committee disagreed that we need serious work in this area, but all parties had lots of questions about how this had come about.

There was unanimous support therefore for the Conservative motion from @PhilipDoggart noting with regret the process up 'til now.

This thread might be longer than the meeting itself – if you've made it to the end, you’ve earned yourself a visit to your local library 📚💚🧵