A major legal ruling in the Western Cape has thrown Cape Town's municipal billing structure into the spotlight, with a court declaring that certain fixed service charges tied to property value cannot stand.
The judgment, handed down by the Western Cape High Court , found that parts of the City's tariff system, including charges for water, sanitation and broader city services, were improperly structured when linked to property values in the way the municipality had proposed, as reported by EWN .
At the centre of the case is a long-running dispute over how residents are billed for basic services, and whether those costs should be treated as fixed charges or consumption-based fees.
