It looks like free advice from Pembrokeshire County Council could soon be a thing of the past.

Last week cabinet voted to start charging a minimum of £90 for advisory visits to catering businesses with similar charges for pre-planning advice to be considered in March.

They agreed a proposal to charge £45 an hour, for a minimum of two hours, to cover the visit, travel time and administrative elements.

A report by the council's director of development says that the number of food advisory visits is rising steadily; in 2014/15 the council carried out 113 visits compared to 47 visits in 2010/11.

"The proposal to introduce a charge should help to protect/maintain a service valued by businesses, which contributes to ensuring timely compliance and helps safeguard public health," reads the report.

The authority's chief finance officer added:

"The introduction of the charge will contribute to the cost reduction/ efficiency targets for the development directorate."

Cllr Huw George, cabinet member for Environmental and Regulatory Services and the Welsh Language, supported the proposals:

"We have been going beyond the call of duty and giving advisory visits for nothing," he said. "There is an opportunity to charge for advisory visits to recover full costs."

Council leader Jamie Adams added:

"They are getting high quality professional advice. If they were going elsewhere they would expect to pay."

Cllr Adams suggested that similar charges should be applied to pre-planning advice:

"I will go one step further and request that cabinet receives a report on the opportunity of moving this principle to another service, that of planning," he said.

"I think it could be considered alongside the opportunity of charging for pre-application advice. It's very much the case that pre-application advice in terms of planning is along exactly the same lines, where it is effectively free consultancy that the local authority is providing."

Director of Development, Steven Jones, confirmed that guidance on charging for pre-application advice was imminent from Welsh Government . Cabinet will look at charging for other advice services when it meets in March.

In the meantime councillors agreed to introduce the charges for food advice visits.