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Sebastian McCarthy What will the end of the holiday mean for the real estate industry? For a start, it will mean fewer deals being done. For while many occupiers might be thinking that now is the right time to take new space ahead of a potential consumer spending boom, agents say that the business rates system is the key factor scuppering their ambitions. As John Webber, head of business rates at Colliers International, puts it: “The dealbreaker which I’m hearing about every single day is the business rates liability on the properties that are lying empty. The landlord is prepared to do a...

John Hamilton Mortimer and the discovery of Captain Cook John Hamilton Mortimer (1740-1779), Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth, c. 1771, oil on canvas, nla.pic-an7351768 The National Library of Australia holds within its large collection of artworks a most intriguing eighteenth century painting, the bequest of Dame Merlyn Myer. A beautiful work in good condition, the painting is unsigned and lacks its original title. Early research into the painting revealed that it had hung unremarked in private collections for 150 years and t...

It means that many medium and large-sized retailers, which typically pay well above £2m in business rates, will be slapped with hefty bills. Scotland and Wales will have 100% rates relief until March 2022. This is because some governmental systems are devolved to different countries in the UK, including business rates. Colliers is calling for the government to reconsider the £2m cap it is proposing to place on business rates relief for the “beleaguered retail sector” when the three months business rates holiday ends at the end of June: “This will become even more pertinent since the m...

Retailers being targeted by rogue rating surveyors, Parliament hears Print 26th May 2021 Rogue rating surveyors promising to obtain a marked reduction in business rates bills are “exploiting businesses to sign unfair contracts”, Parliament heard today (26 May). Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton in North Yorkshire, named and shamed rogue agents who he claimed are “effectively conning” businesses – including those in the retail, hospitality and leisure industries – into signing long term contracts for reliefs they would have received anyway and then pursuing them through t...

As previously reported by  The Morning Advertiser (MA),​ Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, announced that last year’s 100% business rates holiday for the hospitality sector would be extended three months to the end of June 2021 in his most recent Spring Budget​.  Sunak explained that rates bills thereafter would be discounted for the remaining nine months of the financial year by two thirds, up to the value of £2m, for closed businesses, with a lower cap for those who have been able to open, for nine months.  The cap does not refer to individual properties, but to the busin...