Leading rating surveyors from private practice firms including Colliers International, Gerald Eve, Montagu Evans, Allsop and GL Hearn have collaborated on an initiative to encourage the lobbying of MPs about perceived failures of the new business rates appeals system.
The group has drafted a template letter for clients, which they can adapt to their own business’s circumstances and send to their local MP, in an attempt to raise awareness of the problems relating to lodging appeals through the new system.
The system, which came into force on 1 April and is known as “Check, Challenge, Appeal”, requires ratepayers to “check” the information held on the property by the Valuation Office Agency as the first step in the process. Multiple properties held in a portfolio must each be “claimed” separately and the identity of the ratepayer must be proven with supporting documentation.
The template letter expresses “substantial concerns” with this system, suggesting it is “unduly onerous and burdensome”. It also raises concerns over the Valuation Office Agency portal – the mechanism for lodging challenges – arguing that it is “not fit for purpose”.
MPs who receive the letter are being urged to lobby the government to make four key changes to help relieve the burden on business:
- Abolish the need for ratepayers to identify their properties separately when lodging appeals. Instead, businesses should be allowed to list all properties within a portfolio
- A commitment to developing and implementing a new method of electronic communications between its systems, those of businesses and rating surveyors
- Implementation of a “fair approach to challenge”, with a less burdensome approach to proof of evidence for appeals
- Adequate resourcing of the VOA
John Webber, head of rating at Colliers International, which has circulated the template letter to its rating clients, said: “After a seven-year wait it is not unreasonable for hard-pressed businesses in England to expect to have an appeal system that is fit for purpose.
“The lack of planning, insignificant time to trial the system before it went live and apparent lack of desire by the government to engage with agents and their software providers has resulted in a system close to collapse.
“With the 2017 rating revaluation producing some of the largest increases in liability in a generation, it appears that this government has proved yet again that it neither understands the pressures facing business or has a willingness to act on the calls to change,” he added.
“The ridiculously low level of checks or challenges is not an endorsement of the revaluation but a scandal of the government’s making.”
