Nicholas Brown – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Brown on 2015-10-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the cost of administering the proposed safety net mechanism for local authorities which lose more than 7.5 per cent of their business rate revenue in a year; and to what budget this will fall.

Mr Marcus Jones

The Government intends to move to 100% business rates retention in England by the end of this Parliament. We have confirmed that as part of the new system there will continue to be redistribution of local tax revenue between authorities and protections in place for authorities that see their business rates income fall significantly. Over the coming months we will be working with local government on the details of the scheme.

Ahead of final decisions, it is too early to assess what the impact will be on individual areas or authorities, but before the start of the financial year, local authorities in the North-East estimated that the total business rates income for 2015-16 would be £854.58 million.