Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No. 2) Bill

Lord Greenhalgh Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my relevant interests as vice-president of the Local Government Association and a member of Kirklees Council. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has tabled a comprehensive amendment, which addresses issues of concern that were raised and debated in Committee. The Minister was unable to provide sufficient reassurances at that stage, hence today’s amendment, which has the support of the Liberal Democrats, as already clearly stated by my noble friends Lord Stunell and Lady Bakewell.

The Bill as it stands simply changes the date of the assessment of the revaluation to 1 April of this year and to delay the publication of the rateable values until 31 December in the year prior to its implementation. As was debated in Committee, these simple changes may have a profound effect on businesses, the prosperity of our high streets, local government finances and on the appeals waiting lists.

First, I will take the effect on local government finance. During Committee, the Minister sought to provide assurances about the financial impact on council income, and I thank him for that. However, there is a wider point of the double whammy on town centre businesses of the impact of Covid lockdowns and the competitive advantages enjoyed by online business. This is likely to mean that town centres will have several empty shops, which will undoubtedly have a knock-on effect on the remaining businesses.

The Government have some support for town centres, but much is limited and scattered around the country. It does not provide sustained help. Part of the answer lies with the radical reform of the whole business rate system. Will the Minister provide the House with a draft timetable for the introduction of a reformed approach, which, as several noble Lords have stated, has been promised for several years.

My noble friend Lady Bakewell has spoken from her experience of the impact of long appeal waiting lists on businesses and council services. As the Minister will know, councils have to set aside considerable sums for the refund of any possible successful appeal. Will he tell the House the total amount set aside by local authorities for this purpose? If he is not able to do so today, will he agree to set out the information in a letter to those taking part in today’s debate? Is the Minister able to consider an alternative to setting aside large sums for potential refunds that clearly make an impact on the day to day services—as described by my noble friend Lady Bakewell—that a council is able to provide?

The current system of business rating is failing, in that it considerably disadvantages those who have a physical presence as opposed to those purely providing an online retail offer. I am not opposed to online shopping but urge the Government to appreciate the value to communities of physical shopping. As the various lockdowns have shown us, there is an intrinsic value to individuals of physical shopping. One simple benefit is that of meeting another person, in the shop or serving at the till. For too many people living on their own, this may be the one chance in the day that they have to speak to someone.

There is also the benefit to communities as a whole. Local high streets provide a sense of belonging to a place. The importance of place-based services has shone through during the pandemic. Local shops and services are part of that sense of place and play a significant role in supporting well-being. We lose it at our peril.

That leads me to repeat the example I gave in Committee of a small shop in the town centre of Cleckheaton, which pays at the rate of £250 per square metre on its 30 square metres of shopping space. In contrast, a large online-only retailer, with an out-of-town warehouse occupying 40,000 square metres, also in Yorkshire, pays just £45 per square metre. If that online retailer were to pay at the same rate as the small town-centre shop, it would be paying a rates bill of £5 million. That would solve a lot of local government finance issues. The retail playing field is hugely skewed to the benefit of online retailers. The Government must act with urgency to address this imbalance and demonstrate that they really do support prosperous local high streets.

The further problem for the Government and Valuation Office Agency is the timing of the valuation assessment. My noble friend Lord Stunell said today that the changes that the Bill will bring may be too late to save more retailers from closing their high street shops. He suggested bringing forward the implementation date to put it in line with the proposals of Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill, which was discussed last week.

The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, drew attention in Committee and today to the timing of valuations, when so much of the high street has been closed for several months. Equally, it is not of benefit to town-centre retailers that the current valuation will be that on which their rates bills will be based for the next two challenging years. The Government should address this issue with urgency, but there is no evidence that they are doing so. I look forward to the Minister’s responses on a number of these issues and hope that they are more positive than those we received in Committee.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for tabling this amendment, which allows us to return to the important matter of how the revaluation will impact on various parts of our economy. I entirely understand that the House wants to consider the impact of the next revaluation on sectors such as the high street and small business. I point out to the noble Lord that the £1 billion future high streets fund is not insubstantial and forms part of the £3.6 billion towns fund. It is an important part of helping our high streets to bounce back. Also, as has been mentioned by noble Lords, there has been the business rates relief scheme throughout the Covid pandemic, which has cost in the region of £10 billion. It is for the Chancellor to signal how that will continue in his Budget later this week.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referenced the shift over many years, even before the pandemic, towards online and away from place-based shopping on our high streets. It is a matter for the Chancellor, who is carrying out a fundamental review of business rates, to consider how to address that. The interim report is due on 23 March and the review will conclude in the autumn.

Businesses have been calling for frequent revaluations and we had planned for the next one to take effect this year. It would have been based on rental values as at 1 April 2019. In the difficult circumstances in which we now find ourselves, this was clearly unsatisfactory, as those new rateable values would not have shown the impact of the pandemic. Instead, the Bill will move the date on which the next revaluation takes effect back to 2023. This will allow us to use rental values as of 1 April 2021, which will better reflect the impact of the pandemic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I am very happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Addington, in his amendment. Both he and the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made a very powerful case when we were in Committee and they have made an equally powerful case today. I am very happy to support them.

As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, we want to be healthier; we have to get people doing more physical activity, because it will have great effects on their health. That is a good thing as people will live longer and have fewer problems with disease, and that will have a knock-on effect on our health service. That is the most important thing behind all this—getting people to be more active and healthier. The Government are currently running a major campaign, quite rightly, which you see on television, at bus stops and everywhere. I fully support that.

It is also important to ensure that local amateur clubs doing a variety of activities in their communities actually get people doing things. Where I live in south London, there is the Francis Drake Bowls Club—I often go past and see lots of people playing on the bowls green. There is also Lewisham Borough Football Club, an amateur club, and the athletics club that takes part on the track in Ladywell Fields. Those are the things that local people can do to become more active and physical, and if we can support them through the rating system, we should.

As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, all the amendment is asking for is a biennial report. The amendment is much more generous than I would have been as I wanted one every 12 months. If the Government accept this amendment, they will have to do everything that is in it anyway because they need to have good policy, and good policy needs facts and proper information.

I hope that the noble Lord will tear up his speaking notes to resist this and say, “I agree”. I look forward to hearing his response.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, in my rush to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on the first amendment, I forgot to declare my relevant commercial and residential property interests as set out in the register, so I do so now.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan for their suggestion that I tear up my speaking notes and do what the amendment says. I will seek to reassure them that we have a real commitment to community and grass-roots sports. In that spirit I will refer to a number of things that the Government are doing. My family, friends and I all benefit from community sports and it is right that we do all we can to support community and grass-roots sport, as Members have highlighted.

As I explained in my response to the previous amendment, we will not know the effect of the revaluation on ratepayers for some time and certainly not within six months of the passing of this Bill. The same points apply to this amendment. However, I appreciate that the noble Lord and others want to understand how the revaluation will affect amateur sports clubs. It may therefore assist the noble Lord if I explain how these clubs are valued for business rates—I will try to make the incomprehensible comprehensible.



First, the Valuation Office Agency must, by law, value a property having regard to its current use. This means, for example, that when valuing the site of an amateur cricket club the valuation officer must have regard to its value to the cricket club and not its value to a developer. As you would expect, this important principle means that the rateable value of sports grounds is generally quite low.

The VOA publishes statistics on the rateable value of different categories of properties. The average rateable value in England of sports grounds is £12,000 but the value of many is much less than this and the median rateable value of sports grounds is only £6,000. That equates to a full annual rates bill of about £3,000, which for many will be reduced by the 80% mandatory rate relief. Under those circumstances, many sports clubs will find themselves with a rates bill of as little as £600 per year or £50 per month.

Of course, I appreciate that some clubs will find themselves paying more than this. Business rates reflect the specific circumstances of the property so some clubs, for example with more facilities than others, may find themselves paying more. We also heard in Committee that some clubs may be not eligible for the 80% mandatory relief for community amateur sports clubs. That is a matter specific to the individual clubs but I can understand that some will still have a particular interest in understanding whether their rates bill may change at the 2023 revaluation.

As I have said, we will not know the answer to that until much later in 2022, at the point when all clubs will be able to see their new rateable values. These valuations will be prepared over the next 18 months and, as with all properties, the VOA will first search for evidence of rents paid on sports grounds as a guide to value. As I have explained, to be good evidence these rents will have to reflect the value to the sports club. These rents should not reflect matters such as the development value where, for example, the club happens to be in a prosperous area. To the extent that the rental evidence, where available, shows that values have risen or fallen over the last six years, this will be reflected in rateable values at the 2023 revaluation.

The VOA expects to use rental evidence for most clubs but, whatever the valuation approach adopted for the property, the VOA is clear in its guidance that for non-commercial clubs valuers can also have regard to ability to pay before setting rateable values. The valuer should ask themselves if the rateable value represents the rent that clubs or organisations of the kind which occupy the type of sports ground concerned could reasonably be expected to pay. The VOA’s guidance specifically recognises that where income is generated from the occupation of these grounds, the costs of occupation will be barely covered despite voluntary assistance. Although I am unable to tell the noble Lord how amateur sports clubs will be impacted by the 2023 revaluation, I hope that this background to how they are valued is helpful.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, has established to the House the vital importance of our community sports clubs. While the value of the 80% mandatory business rates relief to eligible community amateur sports clubs cannot be understated, I recognise the need for the Government to provide support beyond this, particularly throughout the duration of this pandemic. This Government’s commitment to sport is evidenced by the £220 million provided by Sport England to support community sports clubs and exercise centres since March 2020. In addition, the Government have put in place a £300 million sports winter survival package, which has been used to protect the immediate future of major spectator sports over the winter period, and a £100 million support fund for local authority leisure centres. In total, the Treasury estimates that around £1.5 billion of public money has gone into sports in the last year. I hope the House will agree that this constitutes a significant package of support that this Government have made available to sports clubs and exercise facilities of all sizes.

I hope that I have given the House some assurances about both the financial support that the Government are providing to our grass-roots sports sector, and the process and approach which will be taken over the coming months as amateur sports clubs are revalued by the VOA. We will continue to keep in mind the points on how we can support community sports at the grass-roots level. I appreciate the passion from both the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan, but, reluctantly, I cannot tear up my speaking notes. Therefore, I hope that with these reassurances the noble Lord, Lord Addington, will agree to withdraw his amendment.