Decision details

That the fee for Community Learning be increased from £4.00 per hour to £4.50 per hour for the academic year 2020/21.

That the Community Learning learner fee policy statement for 2020/21 be approved for publication as required by the Education & Skills Funding Agency.

*PLEASE NOTE This decision was originally published on or near the date of the decision and so call in no longer applies. It has been re-published as part of the change in committee management system that we use.*
The context for this review is that in February 2020, the County Council approved a new fees and charges policy which states:
• Unless limited by Statute, fees and charges must be uplifted by the relevant inflation that the fees and charges relate to (finance would calculate the inflation rate specific to the relevant cost base)
• There must be a review of opportunities to introduce new fees and charges
• Fees and charges must be at full cost recovery including corporate and departmental overheads (unless limited by Statute as above)
• If it is not possible to charge/ uplift to a minimum of full cost recovery, then the service should be discontinued
• There must be clear benchmarking of fees and charges against other local authorities/ providers/ competitors that evidences why the recommended fees and charges are proposed

Some limited benchmarking has been undertaken by the service (see table at 7.4 of the report) which was established that some authorities do charge at a higher rate than North Yorkshire.

The purpose of Community Learning is fee remitted and is to develop the skills, confidence, motivation and resilience of adults of different ages and backgrounds in order to:

• progress towards formal learning or employment and/or
• improve their health and well-being, including mental health and/or
• develop stronger communities

These types of courses will remain free to the learner and will not attract a cost.

The Service also offers a small amount of new provision through the Community Learning funding to enable learners to join learning activities for their own enjoyment and to learn or improve skills. This is mainly offered through the Arts and Crafts programmes but there are other offers in the curriculum. These are the courses that will attract the fee charge.

This offer is costed at £4.50 per hour (£4.00 2019/20) for full fee paying learners and £1.80 (£1.60 2019/20) for fee remitted learners as shown in Appendix 1 (Fee and Charging Policy Statement); this will be applied through the same funding entitlement and fee remission rules as Accredited Learning.

The fee level was last updated for the 2014/15 academic year.