The inclusion of a table of maintenance costs based on Council's own costs is considered wholly unreasonable. The costs paid by Local Council's are likely to be significantly less (based on volume and trade discounts with suppliers) than that paid by a developer who operates nationally for example and will not have built up the same business relationships locally. No consideration is given to delivery and collection costs, nor to volume discounts or lead times, or other associated costs to developers such as overheads, staff training, travel costs (as staff will not necessarily be based in Cambridge) etc.

The costs do not relate to specific items and it is therefore unclear how this table would relate to items required by condition on a planning permission or to the general standards of items within the Cambridge setting. Street furniture required within each ward may be completely different dependant on the setting, and proximity to parks and gardens, listed buildings etc. may all impact upon the required type of furniture. The maintenance costs will vary dependent of material, position, usage etc. and as such the average type approach is warned against. The impact of this approach could be compounded by index linking the maintenance costs to the BCIS. Savills consider this approach should be firmly resisted. We are not aware of this scale of maintenance costs being addressed in this way before and suggests to us that the Council is seeking costs savings on elements that could more appropriately be covered through the normal rates payment approach