Clause 5
Business Rate Supplements Bill
12:30 pm
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 5, page 3, line 35, after ‘office’, insert
‘, and the principal offices of any relevant billing authority,’.
It may seem a minor point, but although we have had discussions about London and particular circumstances that pertain there, certain circumstances pertain to rural potential levying authorities as well, given the great distances involved. The provision in clause 5, as it stands, sensibly says that a prospectus should be available on the internet and copies should be available for inspection at the principal office of the levying authority. That may be a problem in two-tier authorities—it may well be in London—where the levying authority is a body at some distance from people. Those people may be involved in a lengthy, sometimes difficult journey in order to go and inspect the prospectus, if they do not have the ability to look at it on the web or if they would prefer to see a hard copy and ask questions of the relevant officer when they are consulting it.
The point of my amendment 8 is that the principal offices of the relevant billing authority should also be in possession of those documents for people to inspect, so that those living at some distance from county hall, for example, in a large rural county, where there may not be particularly regular or frequent public transport, have the opportunity to consult the documents. The prospectus concerns everybody, so although the business community will naturally want to have a look, council tax payers too, for example, might want to view the prospectus and contribute to the general consultation. It is important, therefore, that people living in the area covered by the levying authority have the maximum opportunity to inspect the prospectus. It seems sensible, therefore, to extend the provision of the relevant documents to the offices of billing authorities as well as to those of the levying authorities.