Hi Nick and Paul
This was new policy when it was introduced 18 months ago. Before we had a historic policy of charging per record (an excessive £2 per record), which was really not satisfactory, and I am only too happy for moving away from that.
In practise most of the enquiries come in it £40, for which they get a pdf or hard copy map of the search area whichever is preferred, the HER records, designation records and event records (again paper or pdf as preferred). But for large or complex searches, I can charge for extra staff time or record count, but will always quote in advance, and these rarely come to more than £100 in total, unless GIS data is included. To answer you Paul, I do not enforce the extra per record charge to the letter, but it is useful as an option.
The charging policy seems to have gone down very well and having it very transparent helps, and I can hand on heart say there have not been any grumblings to my knowledge. The urgent charge is a flat fee of £20 on top of whatever the fee would be, but again I haven't had cause to use that much, although it is option if people want.
The targets we meet are 95% within 10 working days. On a related strand, the issues I am hearing from the contractors is the burden of the different requirements/procedures placed by different HERs regarding report submission, OASIS, digital vs paper etc.
Sarah
-----Original Message-----
From: Issues related to Historic Environment Records
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Nick Boldrini
Sent: 09 January 2007 15:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Charging [No Viruses detected]
Hi Sarah
interesting charging scales. Was this a new policy? Was it recently introduce? How did it go down?
I am thinking of the charging per record/map aspect. If we did this, a fair amount of searches would cost more than they do now (we have a standard fee at the moment, regardless of size of inquiry), and some searches (eg the coastline data for various projects I have recently given out) would have cost a load more. But then the cost would be directly reflected by the time it took us.
Also do you levy this charge for eg PDF maps or only hard copy maps?
Finally, I like the urgent request idea (one I was pondering) - does this mean an urgent request automatically costs Forty Pounds (ie the cost is twenty pounds over and above the normal cost?)
I also like the clause about no more than 50 sheets - but will expand upon that in a separate thread.
I would still like to hear more views on charging!
best wishes
Nick Boldrini
Historic Environment Record Officer
Heritage Section
Countryside Service
North Yorkshire County Council
County Hall
Northallerton
DL7 8AH
Direct Dial (01609) 532331
Conserving North Yorkshire's heritage - encouraging sustainable access
www.northyorks.gov.uk/archaeology
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>>> Poppy Sarah <[log in to unmask]> 09/01/2007 15:29 >>>
Dear Tom and all
Happy New Year to you all!
Tom's suggestion below is exactly what I have started doing with the frequent contracting users and it has proved to be very efficient and far less tedious to implement. The danger of too steep an enquiry cost is that all important HER enquiry this will be bypassed by whatever means (especially given current and future developments in online access). It is a noticeable trend that monies from commercial HER enquiries is increasingly becoming an important source of income for our service, and that income has increased 3-4 fold in the last 2 years.
Full details of our charging policy, which has been working very smoothly for the last 2 years, are available online at http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/44034CA6-DE27-4804-B61E-21198BD59319/0/CHERGuidance.pdf for anyone interested.
Best wishes
Sarah
-----Original Message-----
From: Issues related to Historic Environment Records
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Thomas Rees
Sent: 09 January 2007 13:48
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Charging [No Viruses detected]
Sounds a bit severe on commercial enquiries; especially for archaeological consultants/contractors who need to consult frequently on small issues. Could you not just have an account system for frequent enquirers and bill on a quarterly basis ... less paperwork, lower overhead costs, more freedom to operate.
Tom
>We still only charge for commercial enquiries. We've just found out it
>costs 35 pounds to process an invoice, so we now have to add that onto our
>hourly rate (and there is discussion at management level at the moment that
>we should ALWAYS charge a minimum one day's rate for *any* commercial
>enquiry, no matter how small - so that would be a minimum £285 for a
>commercial SMR query)
>Andy
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