Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of allowing NHS Trusts to claim relief on business rates.
National Health Service properties, like almost all other buildings occupied by public bodies, have been subject to non-domestic rates since they were introduced.
Operational costs related to property, which include business rates, are taken into account at spending reviews in determining the overall level of funding for the NHS. The Government committed to backing the NHS’s Five Year Forward View plan with a £10 billion a year real terms increase in funding by 2020/21.
There has been no such assessment.