Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, which criteria were used to determine the allocation of the latest round of business rates retention pilots.

All applications to become a 100 per cent business rates retention pilot in 2018/19 were assessed under the criteria laid out in the ‘Invitation to Local Authorities in England to pilot 100% Business Rates Retention in 2018/19 and to pioneer new pooling and tier-split models’, published on 1 September 2017:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/654936/Pilots_1819_Prospectus.pdf