Spring Statement – rates’ revaluation moving to 2021

By Stuart Hicks, Director

The Spring Statement announces that the government is bringing forward the next rating revaluation for business rates by one year to 2021… Wow!

This follows the Autumn Budget 2017 move to increase the frequency of rating revaluations from every 5 to every 3 years; and that this will continue to be carried out by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). The government has decided not to introduce self-assessment at this stage.

Now that raises a couple of issues.

1. Resourcing; is the VOA able to start the revaluation process next year (the valuation date for the Revaluation will be 1.4.2019) and can they do this before they have started discussing the new 2017 rating list?
2. Is “Check, Challenge, Appeal” dead? The VOA are going to need to get through the 2017 rating list discussions as soon as possible and this cumbersome much maligned new system is stalling… even before it has started.

More frequent Revaluations are welcome but the VOA needs to be funded properly to produce the result. Allowing business rates to be fair, accepted and productive.