Clause 18
Business Rate Supplements Bill
9:30 am
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.