b'An additional complication arises under EU procurement law where one authority is intending to supply a service to another. Does that activity need to be subjected to competitive tender? Members and officers alike struggle to make sense of an increasingly complex legislative environment which is overlaid by the EU procurement regime which can pose significant barriers to joining up services across local authorities and involvement of the third sector. Brexit is unlikely to lead to a removal of these complexities in the short or medium term.What can be done to chart a pathto help well-meaning authorities to stay on the right side of the law when seeking to meet the challenges of major re-organisation, unprecedented budget cuts and pressures to raise revenue? It certainly helps if local authorities set out their aims and objectives clearly and, most importantly, examine the relevant legislation and follow it. The Charging and Trading Chart at 6.20 is designed as a simple summary or aid to finding a route through the various complexities and legislative provisions. It is hoped that with this tool to hand (plus the other practical tips and knowhow contained in this work) local authorities will be able, at long last, to realise opportunities open to them to generate income and deliver efficiencies through charging, trading and other forms of municipal enterprise. Charging and commercial trading 3.3 Charging, commercial trading (and indeed, sharing services) are not the same thing. Careful scrutiny of the legislation and analysis of the activity being undertaken is needed to determine which statute and process is best suited and best describes a particular activity or achieves a particular desired outcome for the authority concerned. This chapter examines the distinctions between these activities starting with charging powers introduced under section 93 of the 2003 Act. As mentioned in Chapter 2, income generating activities by public bodies are always likely to generate controversy and scrutinyas to the way in which such charges are levied, the extent of such charges and over which aspects of public services charges can legitimately be levied. Litigation raged in the 1990s when similar recessionary market circumstances led some local authorities to charge for functions which were previously offered for free; the high-water mark being the Richmond case (see Chapter 2). Section 93 of the 2003 Act was the Labour Governments response to the Richmond case. These provisions contain powers for all local authorities to levy charges for discretionary services. The then Government also took the opportunity to clarify the law on commercial trading and introduced separate statutory provisions to facilitate commercial trading which are contained at section 95 of the same Act (dealt with in Chapter 4). Before the 2003 Act no distinction between charging and trading existed and whether making such a distinction helped or hindered activity in this space is questionable. Whilst the charging powers under section 93 were relatively clear, they also contained restrictions, namely, as follows:46'