Straight from the horse’s mouth: VOA North West revaluation figures

The VOA has finally released its own figures on how the change in the Rateable Value (RV) of non-domestic properties will affect the regions, following the recent revaluation.

The long overdue revaluation will finally reflect changes in the property market since the previous revaluation in 2010 and takes effect from 1 April 2017.

This is all part of the wider government strategy on changes to business rates. Business rates bills are affected not only by revaluation, but also by the tax rate – known as the multiplier – as well as various reliefs and transitional arrangements. The Department for Local Communities and Government is separately consulting on the transitional arrangements for the 2017 business rates revaluation, which I highlighted last week.

The estimated changes in RV between the 2010 rating lists and the 2017 draft rating lists have been broken down by region and property sector, as well as in relation to the overall percentage change in England (for English regions) and Wales. There are no surprises in London and the South East taking the biggest hits on increases as they enjoyed the biggest gains on offer thanks to the postponement of the revaluation in 2015.

However, some businesses in the North West may be disappointed by these overall figures, having anticipated much larger gains for the region, possibly stoked by so much industry speculation on the winner and losers in this process.

The VOA has the North West figures as follows:

  Retail    Industry    Office     Other        All

N West    -5.5%       -3.1%     -4.8%       10.2%       -0.2%

London    26.2%     15.1%     21.2%      25.7%       22.8%

England    4.7%        4.0%      11.3%      15.5%       9.1%

This release shows the situation as at 1 August 2016 and there are still a small number of properties which had not gone through the full revaluation process, so there could be some statistical percentage changes in the RV to come when the 2017 revaluation is complete.

For the full release and a region by region comparison download the report here.