The clamour of voices calling for urgent change to the business rates regime ahead of 1 April, when the new ratings list comes into effect, reached such a crescendo this week that it looks pretty nailed on that there will be some sort of announcement in the Budget on 8 March.
Challenged in Prime Minister’s Questions on business rates on Wednesday, Theresa May certainly intimated as much when she said she empathised with small businesses adversely affected by the revaluation and that she had asked the chancellor and communities secretary to make sure there was “appropriate relief in those hardest cases”.
Later the same day, Sajid Javid - who at the weekend warned Conservative MPs that their revolt was based on “a relentless campaign of distortion and half-truths” (which sounds suspiciously like the British version of “fake news and alternative facts” to me) - was as definitive as any politician ever is when he said he “expects to be in a position to make an announcement at the time of the Budget”.
Let’s hope that he is, and that Philip Hammond’s insistence he is “alive” to the issue translates into action. It is not just the big London retailers that are going to be hit hard by the new regime.
Smaller businesses will be too - at the same time as they have to contend with a likely fall in consumer spending and the ongoing uncertainty and nervousness surrounding Brexit.
Clearly, transitional relief needs a major rethink and that is what those who have been campaigning so vociferously against the new regime will be hoping Javid meant when he promised help for those facing the steepest increases. There also needs to be far more clarity on the parameters of “reasonable professional judgement”.
It is absolutely ludicrous to allow for a margin of error of 20%. That ain’t a margin for error; that’s a recipe for business failure. In fact, the only reasonable move in my view would be to drop reasonable professional judgement.
Distraction from duty
What worries me amid all the noise surrounding business rates is that Hammond will be distracted from other pressing issues, notably the current stamp duty regime. This harmful tax urgently needs reform, as we have argued throughout our Call Off Duty campaign.
This Tuesday, Property Week’s Adam Branson and Samuel Horti hot-footed it to the Treasury on Horse Guards Road to deliver our petition to the chancellor, urging him to revise significant aspects of the punitive regime.
They were not permitted to take photographs of the document being handed over, but the press officer who received it assured them it would be handed straight to Hammond’s private office.
It is vital that he gives this issue the attention it demands. As I argued in the letter that accompanied our petition: “In the government’s own words, ‘the housing market is broken’. Reforming SDLT will go a long way towards fixing it.”
And reform it Hammond must. While we are all familiar with the proverbial leaky bucket and dilemma of which hole to plug, he does have more than one finger!
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