West Midlands property markets disadvantaged by Government's postphoned rates revaluation24th October 2012

Independent commercial property advisor, GVA, claims the Government has missed a clear opportunity to fairly re-distribute the business rates burden.

The Rates Revaluation of 2015, which, last week, was postponed by the Government until 2017, would have seen London take a greater share of England's overall rates bill and regions such as the West Midlands would have seen a welcome overall fall in rates from April 2015.

However Graham Knight, a Director in GVA’s Business Rates team in Birmingham, argues that this move by the Government will, at best, delay the day when Birmingham businesses receive the benefit of lower rates bills, and at worst, will mean that the redistribution might never happen.

Mr Knight said: "It is surprising that a decision like this has been made at a time when the most challenged of ratepayers are pleading for government to help them ride out the worst economic crisis in modern times.

“It is now more important than ever to make sure that your Rateable Values are as low as possible, as rates bills will be based on these figures for an extra two years until 2017 at the very least.”

The revaluation of all rateable values is scheduled to take place every five years and is conducted by the Valuation Office Agency, an executive agency of HM Revenue and Customs. This is to ensure that Rateable Values reflect the changes that have taken place in the property market since the previous valuation date of April 2008, during which rental values across the region have fallen.

It is this process that has been suspended for a further two years, leaving current rates bills for West Midlands businesses rising annually with inflation until 2017 at the earliest.

Mr Knight continued: “All sectors of the West Midlands property markets will be disadvantaged by this decision, but within the industrial sector in particular, which is driving local economic growth, we could have envisaged reductions in rateable value of over 20 per cent, based on current projections. The government talks of rebalancing the economy and supporting manufacturing, yet has postponed this revaluation which would have provided a significant saving for the region’s industrialists and could have been reinvested for growth.”