Lede (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The Lede council raised fees for documents and permits certificates to €200, town planning fees to €100, while taxes stay unchanged. Alderman Peter Venneman defends the move; opposition, including Stin Wille and Filip Bauters, criticises the timing.
As VRT News reported, the municipality of Lede, in the province of East Flanders, Belgium, will present its full multi-year plan for 2025–2031 in December 2025, but the council has already confirmed several price increases. The new fees were approved last week as the municipality prepares for higher daily costs and upcoming projects.
Residents will pay more for identity cards, passports, marriage certificates and legal cohabitation registrations. Housing and building services have also become more expensive. A certificate of conformity for a dwelling now costs €200. The fee for a town planning certificate rises from €30 to €100. An environmental permit application now also carries a €200 charge.
Why is Lede raising administrative fees while taxes stay the same?
Property taxes and the local personal income tax remain unchanged for now. The council made clear that these larger taxes are not being adjusted at this stage. Instead, Lede is choosing to raise money through service fees that match the real administrative cost. The full multi-year plan, which will be released next month, will outline the planned investments, financial priorities and expected spending that will guide Lede through 2031.
“We’re doing this out of an abundance of caution,”
says alderman Peter Venneman (De Coöperatie), responsible for the project.
“We don’t know what’s in store for us at the federal or Flemish level. Every municipality is facing a difficult challenge.”
“In the long term, we want to lower taxes to a Flemish average for similar municipalities. But until 2028, personal income tax will remain at 7.9% and the additional tax at 945.”
“It’s not true that everything is becoming more expensive. We’ve reviewed 15 fee regulations. Of those, 12 remain unchanged. Three fees are being adjusted,”
says Venneman.
The opposition in Lede is not satisfied with the new fee increases approved by the council.
“These regulations impose higher taxes on countless ordinary Members of Parliament, without a substantiated financial plan for the future,”
says Stin Wille (Open Lede).
“We’re raising taxes here before we know what we need them for. And this even though the coalition agreement promises in black and white to gradually reduce taxes.”
Critics say the timing is poor and the impact on residents and local clubs will be felt immediately. A key dispute concerns the rental prices for sports infrastructure.
“In the past, there was a higher rate for sports clubs from other municipalities. Now everyone pays the same price,”
noted Filip Bauters (Vlaams Belang. The opposition asked to delay the new rates, but the majority rejected the request.
The council states that the higher fees are needed to cover rising costs and to support future projects, but details have not yet been released. They mentioned that the plan should outline which services, works or investments will be funded through the updated charges.
Lede’s budget discussion follows several years of rising costs and previous refinements to the municipality’s finances. The previous multi-annual financial plan was adopted in December 2019 and covered the period of 2020–2025. In 2022, a rise in energy costs and increased bill rates for maintenance compelled municipality staff to revisit how it spent its money, while the local sports clubs complained about rents rising.
During the course of 2023, Council met to discuss the need for fee partnerships with service providers to keep pace with increases in personnel and daily operations costs. In the middle of 2024, the municipality began preparing for the New multi-annual financial plan for 2025–2031, as required of all Flemish municipalities. The fee increases approved in November 2025 are within the framework of the new multi-year financial framework.
