The Regulations state that, when allowing re-use, public sector bodies can usually only charge marginal costs incurred in respect of “reproduction, provision, and dissemination of documents”. For example, if we provide a copy of a dataset on disk for re-use, we can charge for the cost of the disk and postage.
The exceptions to the default position of marginal cost charges are:
- Where we are required to generate revenue to cover a substantial part of the costs relating to our public task.
- Where we are required to generate revenue from documents to cover a substantial part of our costs.
- Where the information is held for the purposes of our libraries, museums or archives.
For (1) and (2), the total income for the accounting period must not exceed the cost of collection, production, reproduction and dissemination of the information, together with a reasonable return on investment.
In the case of (3), the total income for the accounting period must not exceed the cost of collection, production, reproduction, dissemination, preservation and rights clearance of the information, together with a reasonable return on investment.
The Regulations do not define a reasonable return on investment. The rate of return to be applied on capital employed in a public sector body’s service provision will depend on whether that service provision competes with private sector provision of similar services.
Normally the standard cost of capital will apply. However, in cases where provision competes with private sector provision of similar services, the rate would be in line with the rates achieved by comparable businesses facing a similar level of risk.