Clause 18
Business Rate Supplements Bill
9:30 am

Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move amendment 18, in clause 18, page 12, line 41, leave out ‘March’ and insert ‘January’.

The amendment seeks to examine the question of when the billing authority gets formal notice of the intention to charge a levy. My understanding of the Bill is that the levying authority has until the end of February in the calendar year in which the BRS will come into force, which is in the April. That is a concern because when people are given late deadlines, things can creep towards it; my thought is to bring that deadline back to the start of the calendar year so that the billing authorities have more notice. I say that because, for example, where a ballot is to be held, and it is not clear whether the BRS will go ahead, it may take the billing authority a considerable amount of work to put things in place in order to enact it. It is a straightforward amendment that allows the billing authorities a little more leeway in getting prepared for things to run smoothly when the BRS comes in at the beginning of the financial year.

Bob Neill (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)

I apologise for not having welcomed you to the Chair earlier, Mrs. Dean, on behalf of myself and my hon. Friends. We are delighted to see you, as are all the other members of the Committee.

I have much sympathy with the amendment. It may be that March is used because it is a standard date in local government legislation. I served on a London borough council, which is a billing authority, for a number of years and talked to many others who are on billing authorities. I remember, therefore, the frustrations one often had when there was a precepting authority that went right up to the deadline in fixing its precept.  That caused difficulty for the second-tier authorities in working out their budgets. The circumstance here is similar; putting back the deadline would make it easier for people to plan and get things in order.

Sadiq Khan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Community Cohension and Fire and Rescue Service), Department for Communities and Local Government; Tooting, Labour)

I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Dean. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I thank the hon. Member for North Cornwall for explaining the reasons for tabling the amendment, and I acknowledge the points made by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst.

Amendment 18 would mean that levying authorities in two-tier authorities, and the Greater London authority, would have to serve notice on the billing authorities in their area, regarding the arrangements that are to apply for their BRS for the forthcoming financial year, before 1 January. In practice, we would expect levying authorities to give notice earlier than this to ensure that a BRS goes out with the rates bill.

A date of before 1 January would be three months earlier than the date in the Bill of 1 March. That March deadline was chosen for consistency with the timetable for upper-tier authorities in the GLA to issue council tax precepts for the forthcoming year, and with the budget setting process. We are trying, therefore, to ensure that the arrangements for BRS dovetail as far as possible with the existing administrative arrangements, hence minimising the burden on both the levying and billing authorities.

If agreed to, the amendment would cause inconsistency because the BRS and budget-setting/precept processes would be running to different timetables. Also, levying authorities—including the GLA—that intend to levy a BRS from 1 April 2010 could face difficulties in the short to medium term in meeting the timetable proposed by the amendment. The timetable is particularly tight considering that, before the levying authority can notify the billing authority, it will need to have prepared a prospectus, completed the mandatory consultation and revised the proposals in response to the consultation. I therefore respectfully ask the hon. Member for North Cornwall to withdraw his amendment.

Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

I was interested to hear what the Under-Secretary said about what would be expected of levying authorities. However, the concern is that what is expected and what is delivered may be two different things. The real reason lies in what he said about Crossrail in his closing remarks. Once again we have hit on an issue where the Bill has been drafted to meet the Crossrail timetable but will have effects elsewhere across the country, which is a grave concern.

The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst referred to issues with precepting authorities. In my constituency there is a five-member parish council where there was a dispute between two members and the other three. The three resigned, making the parish council inquorate and no other people could be found to serve with the two who remained. There was a problem in setting a precept for that year, and this was quite a controversial time in the parish. In the end, we managed by public meeting to find some people willing to stand and resolved the  situation. I make that as an aside about the frustrations that billing authorities can experience when dealing with other authorities.

I have not heard a persuasive argument from the Under-Secretary as to why we could not push the deadline back a bit further; we are talking about potential applications of this Bill much wider than Crossrail. I am concerned that, for example, where a ballot is to be held, if the deadline for having all the regulations in place is the beginning of March, that could allow extra leeway for the ballot to take place later. If a deadline is pushed later there is sometimes less impetus—less momentum to get things tied up and dealt with earlier.

I am not going to press this amendment to the vote because I think we have made the point, but I hope that the Government will clearly signal their intention in any reflections and advice they offer to local authorities as to how a prospectus should be put together. Every effort must be made to give as early an indication as possible to the billing authority as to what is proposed and what is likely to occur, so that we do not get the situation where a billing authority has to struggle to deliver things on time for the BRS to be imposed in the financial year.

Sadiq Khan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Community Cohension and Fire and Rescue Service), Department for Communities and Local Government; Tooting, Labour)

As we have discussed, in two-tier areas the lower-tier authorities will act as the billing authority for the purposes of BRS. Clause 18 sets out the requirements on levying authorities in terms of notifying the lower-tier authorities in their area of their intention to levy a BRS, so that billing arrangements can be made in good time—and I hear the points made by the hon. Member for North Cornwall.

The key provisions in this clause are: subsection (1) requires levying authorities intending to impose a supplement to give written notice to each billing authority in their area; subsection (2) sets out the information that must be contained in the notice; subsection (3) specifies when the notice must be given and subsection (4) explains the scope and content of notices where the levying authority intends to impose more than one supplement in the year.