Apologies for cross-posting.
Hi all
Many thanks to all those of you who responded to request re approaches to fines. Apologies for not replying to you individaully. I thought you may like to have a brief summary of the responses. There seem to be three approaches - No fines with or without other penalties, Daily Fines, One off Charges or other charges
No fines with or without other penalties
Don't fine but invovice through Finance and add £15.99 admin fee.
Don't charge fines as penalises honest students who return items and causes conflict at the desk while not generating much income.
Don't have fines as low income area but do ban from computer access and further borrowing.
Yes, our radical approach is not to charge fines at all - book loans are up and the rate of non-returns has declined
Daily Fines
20p per day up to a maximum of £5 for each standard loan item (4 week loan), and 50p per day up to a max of £5 for each 7-day or overnight loan item this includes automatic ban from further computer use and borrowing and after 28 days college wide PC block. If cost of books are more than £60 referred to Finance Dept.
We have a large fine of 5 pounds per day for 1 day loan items, to a maximum of 10 pounds per item.
Borrowing stops when users owe 25 pounds. Otherwise have cumulative fines of 50p per day on one week loans and 25p per day on 3 week loans, to a maximum of 10 pounds per item.
Our new fines policy for the coming year will be 1 day's grace followed by 1 pound per day afterwards. We block borrowing at £10.
We don't charge fines but do go down the route of suspending any loans until items are returned. This seems to work well, and does away with having to deal with coins, cash-boxes etc. The items do tend to come back quite quickly once the students realise that they cannot borrow anything until they do!
One off Charges or other charges
email staff and students when items are one day overdue, when they reach 8 days overdue they are charged £4.99 (this covers all items due back that day)
Fine staff when their books reach third overdue stage and the fine is £5.
Only charge fines to HE and Part-Time students and max fee of £10 per item.
Max fine of £2.50 and using PC booking system to give message to students re overdues.
We just charge a fixed price administration charge for sending out an overdue letter. Currently this is 60p, and is a single charge for the letter, irrespective of how many items are listed as overdue on it.
We charge a one-off fine of:50p standard loan, 75p 7 day loan,£1 overnight loan. If the book isn't returned after 5 weeks an invoice is issued. If the customer returns the book and pays the fine invoice is ignored.
I was surprised at how many alternatives were being operated to daily fines, which I always presumed was the norm, particularly those not charging at all. We are going to run with the original proposal and see how this goes. As one respondent said, nobody seems to have the perfect solution! Ultimately, I guess it all comes down to, whether you charge or not, to the individual and their level of organisation and honesty.
Lee Bryant
LRC Manager
City of Bristol College
Ashley Down
BRISTOL
BS7 9BU
0117 3125184
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