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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of unresolved business rates appeals on financial planning in local government.

Since 2013, local authorities have been required to set aside some of their business rates as "provisions" to meet the cost of future business rates appeals. The timing of the settlement of those appeals, therefore, is less relevant to local authorities' financial planning than their ability to estimate the scale of future appeal losses. We have agreed with local government that the difficulty of estimating future appeal losses, together with the way in which the business rates retention scheme deals with those losses, can impact adversely on authorities' financial planning and finances. In designing the new 100 per cent business rates retention scheme, therefore, we are looking again, in collaboration with local government representatives, at the way in which the new system should deal with appeal losses and aim to bring forward proposals shortly.