1.7 Under the terms of the contract, the Service should have agreed the baseline Unitary Service Charge to be applied from the date of occupation of the building. To do so, parts of the Unitary Service Charge agreed at contract signature needed to be increased to take account of inflation by applying actual RPI1 and GDP2 deflators as appropriate. The Service did not apply the actual deflators. Instead, Consul applied an indicative rate of three per cent a year and increased the Unitary Service Charge by this amount. In the event, actual inflation was lower than three per cent a year and consequently the Service has been paying a higher Unitary Service Charge than it should have. It was only in October 2002 that the Service identified the correct Unitary Service Charge applicable on occupation and it is now seeking to recover £5,000 overpaid.
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1 Retail Price Index.
2 Gross Domestic Product