Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she has made an assessment of the merits of increasing the Business Rates discount to twenty percent for hospitality venues.

At the Budget, the Valuation Office announced updated property values from the 2026 revaluation, which came into effect on 1 April. This revaluation is the first since the pandemic, which has led to significant increases in rateable values for some properties as they recover from the pandemic.

In recognition of the impact of the revaluation on bills, the Government has introduced a support package worth £4.3 billion, to protect against ratepayers seeing large overnight increases in bills. This includes an expanded Supporting Small Business scheme, which caps the bill increases of ratepayers who previously received retail, hospitality and leisure (RHL) relief.

The Government has also introduced new permanently lower multipliers for eligible RHL properties. These new multipliers are worth nearly £1 billion per year and benefit over 750,000 properties.

Unlike RHL relief, the new multipliers are permanent, giving businesses certainty and stability, and there is no cap, meaning all qualifying properties on high streets across England benefit. The RHL multipliers are set 5 pence below their national equivalents. As they are funded by a high-value multiplier on the top one per cent of properties, making them even lower would have led to a higher multiplier for high-value properties, including high-value RHL properties and those used by Industrial Strategy sectors.

As a result of these measures, most properties seeing increases have them capped at 15 per cent or less in 2026/27, or £800 for the smallest.