ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide some simple statistics that describe the variations between authorities in the average level of income received from charges to consumers for different services. Of more significance, though, than the most realistic estimate of the average contribution is the considerable variation in average income obtained by authorities for a service over which they have only limited pricing discretion. In contrast to residential accommodation for the elderly and parental contributions for children in care, the level of charges for day nurseries lies within the discretion of local authorities. Like day nurseries, charges for home helps are levied at the discretion of individual local authorities, and in 1975-6 thirteen of them received no income at all from such charges. Although Labour-controlled authorities have a higher probability of receiving less than 5 per cent of the cost of day nurseries from charges than do non-Labour councils, the situation is less clear-cut among the higher income authorities.
