Admin fees and paper trails.

I'll cut a long story short and omit much information for ease

Our allotment plots prices are going up and I am in the middle of the muddle trying to sort a lot of things out, along the lines of forming an association. For various reasons this will take a year or two, but I am working towards it.

In the meantime new plot costs have been totalled and one third of those costs are admin fees £2.5k from £7.5k toal costs. This is a lot of money as a cost for essentially banking the plot fees that our clerk insists are paid by cheque or postal order, she insists plot fees are paid this way as it leaves a paper trail necessary for her accounting.

Surely this is rubbish and payments could be accepted by card, BACS transfer or paypal..a digital payment. This could be paid direct into the parish council account and so provide the necessary paper trail.

I have asked this here before and the answer was of course, that digital payments is a paper trail.

But next week I have organised a chat with the chair of the parish council and need to make sure my facts are correct, I want to go to that meeting and confidently tell her we can go digital with plot rents, so saving the admin fees and lowering plot rents.

I know there are a few experts here, can anyone offer any advice or point out anything I may have missed, even though I have provided scant info?

Thanks in advance.

Steve...

 

I am sure someone with admin knowledge can advise on this . I can't remember the last time I wrote a cheque , and not seen a postal order for 30 years.

 

What exactly is being paid for in that £2.5k cost, Steve? Do you have a set of Accounts for the allotments to see what this would be?

 

The £2.5k is an admin fee, breakdown of which we have not yet seen, but we are working on it. The other £5k of costs comprise of water bill, some period fencing, some saved for future capital expenditure (large projects) and some for maintenance etc.

 

Yes John, we are suspicious and think it is merely a method for the PCouncil to claw back money it has spent.

Over the last two years and without consulting plot tenants the PC has spent £12,000 on a breeze block wall, part of the boundary of one of our sites (we have 2), and £6000 on asbestos removal.

The wall was typical dry stone for here in Cumbria, stand anywhere here look around you will see dry stone walls tumbling down, its part of the character of the county. But if we had of known it was an issue we would have got a working party together and sorted it on a Saturday afternoon, such is how things are done here. We would never have replaced it with ugly breeze blocks.

As for the asbestos removal, it did need to be done fair enough. But, one of our plots tenants is an asbestos remover and we could have had it done for peppercorn rates, by assisting him or working to his directions.

There is no communication between the PC and plot tenants and I am aiming to change that, but I need to get rid of this damn admin fee, I wanted to make sure there are no costs that form part of an admin fee that I had not thought of and that it is solely made up for clerks hours as described by Shiny above.

I am waiting on a few bits of info, but if the plot rents go up as specified, many will give their plots up, around 7 or 8 on each site, and my rough workings out on the back of a cigarette packet suggest the council would lose rather than gain.

Steve...

 

As long as it is in the minutes..

Steve...

 

I went to meet with the chair of the parish council last night. The admin fees comprise of hours spent by the clerk on allotment matters over the last year, It was noticed by the council over preceding years that more and more time was being devoted to the allotments because around 12 years ago the county council gave the two sites to our local parish council to manage, with no fixed procedures or paperwork handed over and subsequent parish council involvement has been minimal at best.

So over the last two years they have had a "working group" to solve these issues and this last year the clerks time on the allotments has been written down.

I went well prepared though and told the chair she would have 38 empty plots in October if the price rises went ahead, and asked if the council could afford to maintain those fallow plots and possible costs of strimming them regularly to keep weeds down.

I suggested a fair rent rise and compared that to losses the PC would have and how tenants could help to cut those for the PC, if they went forward with their rises.

Water management and education is one I have put forward along with taking on some of the admin tasks to reduce that horrendous fee. We will need a society to get these things done. But a society was always forefront on my mind to form anyway.

It all comes down to communication, the PC have not been very forward with that over the years despite tenants best efforts to connect. I gave the chair an example last night, the PC spent £18k last year on asbestos removal and rebuilding a wall. A tenant led working party could have rebuilt the dry stone wall and one of the tenants is an asbestos remover by trade..we could have cut those costs to less than £3k. Communication is now uppermost in everyone's minds...money always motivates!

I've also requested that I become part of the working group moving forward as their next task is setting plot rents and associated budgets.

Steve...