Issue - meetings

Discretionary Business Rate Relief

Meeting: 05/09/2017 - Cabinet (Item 8)

Minutes:

Background:

This report provided details of a request from Central Government that Local Authorities consider using their discretionary powers to award business rate relief in certain circumstances. This included reliefs for local newspapers, small businesses, pubs and a new discretionary rate relief, details of which were set out in paragraphs 2 and 3 of the report. It was also reported that the Government would legislate to enable local authorities to use their existing discretionary relief powers to support publicly owned public toilets from 1 April 2018.

The report stated that officers were not currently in a position to be able to identify, quantify and award all these reliefs although the possibility of reliefs being awarded was taken into account by officers considering any recovery action. Therefore, it was proposed that the detailed qualifying criteria be delegated to the Chief Finance Officer, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Business Management, to enable reliefs to be approved up to the level of Government funding.

Decision number:	Decision:
99/2017	The Cabinet agreed to adopt the discretionary rate relief scheme for local newspapers in line with Government guidelines.
100/2017	The Cabinet agreed to adopt the Supporting Small Business Rate Relief scheme in line with Government guidelines.
101/2017	The Cabinet agreed to adopt a Support for Pubs discretionary relief scheme and agreed to delegate authority to the Chief Finance Officer, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Business Management, to set the qualifying criteria, as outlined in paragraph 3.4 of the report.
102/2017	The Cabinet agreed to adopt a New Discretionary Rate Relief scheme to be met within Government funding limits, and agreed to delegate authority to the Chief Finance Officer, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Business Management, to agree the detailed application of the scheme, as outlined in paragraph 4.2 of the report.

Reasons:

The relief schemes have been promoted by and will be funded by central government to assist small business ratepayers. Given the lack of cost to the local taxpayer it is appropriate for the Council to operate such a scheme.

The business usages for which the New Discretionary Rate Relief is awarded will be compatible with the Authority’s wider objectives for the local area.