As part of the annual planning process, fees and charges are reviewed to ensure the costs of providing these Council services are recovered by those who use them. This annual review provides the opportunity to reflect changes in the costs and services.

Due to the increased operating costs most fees and charges are being increased by 3% in line with current inflation. We need to ensure costs are recovered so that Council services are not subsidised further by rates.

The fees and charges to provide services are driven by operating costs which have increased in recent times. Some fees are proposed to increase or change to actual costs so that costs are fully recovered as much as possible.

The most significant changes are:

Hireage Les Munro Centre
It is proposed to make the Supper Room at Les Munro available at a cheaper rate this may encourage more community use of this facility. The other hire fees are retained at the current price.

Changes to water and wastewater fees
For water and wastewater location services there is currently a set fee for the whole district. A review of the actual costs shows there is a significance difference depending on location. It is proposed to better recover this cost by adding site specific fees.
Disconnection and reconnection fees are proposed to move to a quote-based charge from an approved Contractor, this is due to the wide range of costs for this service it also aligns the approach to new connection services.

Te Kūiti Transfer Station and rubbish bags
We are looking to increase the gate charges and the cost of the official WDC rubbish bags due to increasing operating costs and waste minimisation levy.
The tonnage charges for general waste would increase by $14 to $365 per tonne, and for green waste by $13 to $245 per tonne.
The official WDC rubbish bags would increase from $5.30 to $5.50.
Kerbside collection and using blue bags are the most cost-effective way to dispose of small waste volumes.
We are proposing to increase the minimum waste limit from 10kgs to 30kgs (two maximum weight WDC bags) and the minimum charge by $2 to $14.50. (Blue WDC bags are free to dispose of at any of our transfer stations)
For waste over 30kgs the tonnage charge will be applied with no minimum charge added.
Green and timber waste the minimum charge for up to 40kg is proposed to be $11.50. Over that weight the charge will be at the tonnage rate.
We have clarified our pricing so that we will charge differently for general waste, green waste, all timber waste and scrap metal.  Contaminated waste cannot be safely transported so will no
longer be accepted. We are no longer able to accept some items at rural transfer stations such as
whiteware and appliances, so these have been removed from the schedule.

Alcohol Licensing
The second stage of fee increases that was adopted by Council with the Alcohol Fees Bylaw in 2025 are being applied this year from 1 July 2026. This will increase the cost recovery of the licensing activity and reduce the ratepayer contribution.

Consenting
Changes to the consents process through legislative reform requires some adjustment to consenting fees and charges.
It is proposed to add a fee for ‘granny flats’ PIMs to recover the administrative costs of these reports. A PIM (Project Information Memorandum) must be applied for before constructing these buildings, the proposed fee is $900 which is aligned with neighbouring councils.
We have also incurred cost increases from external sources for our building consenting so we have had to increase costs for the relevant processing fees. A 5% increase has been proposed across a number of consent and inspection fees.

In General
Some of our fees and charges have required more significant increases often due to increased staff time to complete the service or higher contractor costs.
There are some fees and charges that we have been able to maintain at the 2025/26 level as the cost recovery is being met. Slight wording changes have also been made throughout to better describe fees and charges.

Council adopted the Dog Fees and Charges on 24 March 2026 and some fees are set by legislation such a parking and litter infringements so are not part of the consultation.