Agenda item

Report by Public Protection Manager (attached)

The Committee considered a report by the Public Protection Manager (circulated previously) regarding residential park home sites, fees and licensing and compliance policies.

The Public Protection Manager highlighted the following:

·       There were currently 10 residential sites across the district with more than one caravan onsite. Despite legislative changes creating a position whereby fees may now be charged for licence applications and inspections associated with residential park home sites, the Council has no Fees Policy or fee structure in place. Therefore the Council had been under-recovering fees from this licensed community.

·       Fit and proper person fees were approved in 2021, whereby a fee of £165.10 was imposed. Based upon increases in hourly rates and marginal increases in time now allowed in the calculations an increase in fees to £200.05 was recommended.

·       Appendix B detailed the associated calculations of the fees.

·       A summary of the pertinent legislation covering fees was contained in Appendix D of the report.

·       The calculations detailed in Appendices A and B were broken down into four categories, namely 2- 50, 51-100, 101-150 and 151 plus units of accommodation. In North Devon it was perceived that 80% of sites would fall into the 2-50 band. Officers have determined it appropriate to use the same methodology for grant of a licence and the payment of annual fee, hence the same bands of units of accommodation were used to provide for consistency.

·       It was proposed that a fees policy for the licensing of residential park home sites be implemented from April 2024 and that this be subject of public consultation exercise.

·       It was necessary to clarify the Council’s position with regards to site licence compliance. The draft Policy on the Licensing and Compliance of Residential Park Homes had been designed to support the Fees Policy (Appendix C). It sets out how this licensing regime was to be administered and regulated.  Prior to Covid, this draft policy had been considered by the Licensing and Community Safety Committee, however it had not been appropriate to out for consultation on the draft policy at that time. It was proposed that this draft policy be also subject of a public consultation exercise.

In response to questions from the Committee, the Public Protection Manager advised the following:

·       That the fit and proper person fee was a one off fee. This was subject to separate legislation which came into effect in 2014. It was a requirement of operators to register.  These would be subject to renewal over a cyclical period. The fee was currently £165.10 and based upon increases in hourly rates and marginal increases in time now allowed in the calculations it was recommended that it be increased to £200.05.

·       New applications for a residential caravan site licence would include pre-application advice as part of the fee.  This was unusual as for other licences, pre-application advice could not be factored into the fee.  The proposed fee for a new application for a site between 2-50 units was £376.71.  Once an application had been approved, it was proposed that the annual renewal fee would be £239 which would not include the element of pre-application advice.

RESOLVED:

(a)  That the draft Fees Policy for the Licensing of Residential Park Home Sites, contained in Appendix A of the report (and associated calculations of these fees contained in Appendix B) which proposes new fees to be implemented from April 2024 be approved for consultation;

(b)  That the draft Policy on the Licensing and Compliance of Residential Park Home Sites contained in Appendix C of the report be approved for consultation;

(c)  That the Public Protection Manager be instructed to undertake a six week period of consultation on the above documents, and provide feedback on the results of the consultation exercise to a future committee meeting.