Autumn ‘meltdown’ for business rates system
BRITAIN’S business rates system is heading for meltdown this autumn after it emerged that the Government agency responsible has failed to deal with 300,000 appeals.
The Valuation Office Agency, an executive agency of Revenue & Customs, is understood to deal with around 10,000 appeals a month but figures suggest the size of the backlog has barely changed since the beginning of the year.
With new bills set to arrive next month, experts fear the system will be pushed close to breaking point. The appeals date back as far as 2010 and the backlog has been worsened by the two-year delay to the publication of new business rates due in 2015.
But leading commercial estate agent Colliers International said the system will come under more pressure next month when ‘understaffed and demoralised’ Valuation Office Agency (VOA) workers are due to issue millions of new business rates valuations for April 2017. John Webber, head of ratings at Colliers, said: ‘The VOA is under-resourced, undermined at every turn and demoralised. It must be a very difficult place to work.’
He also said firms awaiting new business rates lists will be braced for huge hikes because the last revaluation was linked to 2008 property prices.
Since then, property values – the yardstick for business rates calculations – have soared in some areas including London and the South East.
Webber said the Government needs to take action to prevent a tidal wave of appeals, in particular ‘specious’ claims, swamping the Agency and to ease the pain of significant business rate increases.
He added: ‘The Government’s decision to delay the last revaluation will come home to roost in a matter of weeks when we predict massive business rates hikes across London and the South East.
‘This leaves the Treasury with no alternative except to introduce significant relief to ease the pain.’
The new draft rating list will be published on September 30.