Cabinet approved the continuation of the Governments Discretionary Revaluation Support for the remaining two years of the relief as set out in the report, and previously agreed by Cabinet in August 2017.

Councillor Roger Ramsey, Cabinet Member for Finance and Property, introduced the report.

The report set out the Council’s proposals for administering the remaining two years of the Governments Revaluation Support Scheme (RSS) for the financial years 2019/2020, and 2020/2021 and the principles of the scheme for the remaining period up until 2020/2021.

In the Budget statement on 8 March 2017, the Chancellor announced that the Government would provide £300m to support those business most adversely affected by the recent revaluation of commercial properties. The funding was provided over a period of 4 years.

The RSS adopted in 2017 is in addition to the changes announced in the budget on 29 October 2018, which provides further support to businesses from April 2019. Local Authorities were able to use their current powers with regards to Discretionary Business Rate Relief under Section 47 of the Local Government Act 1988 to develop and administer this new relief.

It was explained that the Government did not prescribe how this relief was to be applied as they considered that Local Authorities were best placed to design their own relief schemes to determine eligibility and how best to distribute this support.

Havering received Government funding of £1.696m. The funding for 2017/2018 & 2018/2019 which had to be applied in year, has been fully allocated to the eligible properties in accordance with the scheme approved by Cabinet on 9 August 2017.

Reasons for the decision:

The Council is required by central government to fully implement the Discretionary Revaluation Support Scheme. The Council does not have the ability to abstain from the implementation of the scheme.

Other options considered:

The report proposes a continuation of the Governments Revaluation Support Scheme as agreed at Cabinet on 9 August 2017. The proposal is in-line with the Governments criteria to help small businesses.

Cabinet approved the continuation of the Governments Discretionary Revaluation Support for the remaining two years of the relief as set out in the report, and previously agreed by Cabinet in August 2017.