Clause 15
Business Rate Supplements Bill
6:30 pm
John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour)
Clause 15 allows levying authorities to grant relief on the payment of business rate supplements—a matter that we touched on in earlier discussions. When a levying authority decides to grant BRS relief, subsection (2) provides that the chargeable amount must be calculated in accordance with the rules set by that authority. That gives a levying authority flexibility to decide precisely how the relief should be applied. It could set a threshold for BRS liability that was higher than the £50,000 rateable value prescribed by the regulations under clause 12, or it could introduce a taper, applying for example a multiplier of 1p for properties with a rateable value of less than a set amount and 2p for those with a rateable value of more than that amount. Another approach enabled by the flexibility in the clause is to phase in a BRS over a number of years, so that, for example, a 0.5p multiplier is introduced for the first five years of a project, a 1p multiplier for the next five years, and a 2p multiplier for the years after that.
Finally, subsection (3) sets out the conditions that must be met before the relief may be applied. The relief can be based only on rateable value and it must be applied uniformly to all types of hereditaments and owners or occupiers. A levying authority could not apply relief only to warehouses or certain types of retail outlets. That ensures consistency and fairness across the BRS area.
I hope that, on the basis of those remarks, members of the Committee will now allow the clause to stand part of the Bill.