Taking planning fees by cheque - in this day and age! - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Well I'm not quite sure that is necessary . As I understand it if you have a cheque book you have a debit card and debit cards work just as well for payments over the phone or web (if you have access to that). I would not expect many would pay with a credit card (least of all CBI or HBF). It may wel be that for many the attraction of knowing you wont accidently overpay if you have trouble working out the fee, and then have to worry about if you'll get a refund, is very reassuring. For many being able to talk to someone on the phone to take the payment or pop in and pay is more empowering than sending a cheque to a big anonymous town hall somewhere. I would have thought the only indefensible position is knowingly working in a way that is inefficient and wasting tax payers money. Incidently I'm not convinced that steroyping the old and poor as incaperble of making a payment over the phone is a valid assumption.

Hi Alasdair, many people who have accounts with cheque books do not have a debit card just a cash card. I do not think that you would be entitled to insist on electronic payments, consider how you would fight an appeal on non-determination if you had returned a cheque. Costs would be on the cards (pardon the pun!) I think. One other issue is that you would have to check the fee, notify the applicant and get the fee from them on the same day that the application is received otherwise the applicant is losing time because time for consideration of the application does not begin until the fee is received.

It's also worth having a look at the material in e-pay, another local e-gov initiative (at http://www.epayments.org.uk/) - used by some councils to facilitate all sorts of payment tranactions.

'I would have thought the only indefensible position is knowingly working in a way that is inefficient and wasting tax payers money' I think this may be the true issue. Just because a technology is 'old' doesn't make it inefficient. Perhaps a review of how the system is operating may reveal areas where inefficiencies can be resolved ?? We take over 6500 cheque payments a year for planning/building regs and land charges fees both in person and through the post and experience very few problems with incorrect fees. Two advantages of cheques - 1 The payment arrives with the application and can be directly linked with it. No searching through banking/elctronic payment records for it. 2 An agent can pay with the applicant's money. A cheque is a 'transportable' method of payment unlike a card. Transaction costs are very similar for cheques and debit cards. Credit card costs average 2% for the council.

As a public service, forcibily altering payment options are a matter for the members, even assuming that the relevant legislations permits refusual of a valid method of payment. However.... You can make cheaper and more effecient methods of payment more attractive and easier to use. Chances are your finance directorate already has an electronic payment system in place, and most FDs and auditors will be glad to encourage use of such systems if you approach them. (E-Payments are more easily audited) Card and Pin systems in planning reception help. Online payment engines are easy enough to rig with an automated payment matching program (see IT department). You will still need to review the matching process, and handle any unmatched payments, but the computer program can do the leg work. Encourage use of the Planning Portal (it calculates the correct fee and takes the payment). I still continue to be amazed at the number of councils that have done NO publicity on the E-Planning services. With agents, consider using invoicing processes, varying the payment terms based on how reliable they are, this gives you the option to "reward" reliable agents who check the applications properly so they don't bounce in validation. Contary to popular belief cheques are not cheap to process. Whilst the CC rates are around 1.5% to 2.5% dependant on the bartering skills of your FD. Some of the "bean counters" will tell you about the cheque banking charges if you ask about cost of payment processes, the true Accountants will be able to tell you the processing cost for an average cheque, which will include entry and reconcilation costs, chasing of bounced cheques, and auditing costs for missing cheques droped down the back of a filling cabinet. (I use £15/cheque as a rough estimate before digging into an organisations actual hard data on cheque processing) The above are fairly generic approaches to reducing the cost of collection which have worked in a number of different organisations, to work out what is best for a particular organisation, a competent BA is required, they will probably also pick up on other improvement oportunities whilst they review the payment processes.