Business rates expert calls for ‘fundamental reform’ in Autumn Budget

Business rates experts at Colliers are calling on the Chancellor to cancel a proposed surcharge on bigger businesses and bring in fundamental business rates reform.

The real estate experts fear Labour’s pre-election promises of lowering the burden of business rates is “dead in the water” – with Rachel Reeves hinting taxes could rise.

John Webber (pictured), head of business rates at Colliers, said: “The Chancellor should cancel her proposals for a new complicated system of multipliers when she announces her Autumn Budget next month, and in particular the higher surcharge planned for bigger businesses- if she is truly serious about encouraging growth in the UK and saving the High Street.

“If the Chancellor does not take action to reduce this rates burden, we will see more businesses going into administration, across the board, particularly as the current  £1.7 billion Retail, Leisure and Hospitality Relief is removed by April 2026.”

In a six-point plan on business rates, Webber is urging the Chancellor to:

• Abandon plans for a new complicated system of five multipliers
• Announce a roadmap for reform – to reduce the multiplier long term to 35p
• Review reliefs 
• Reform the appeal system 
• Extend empty property rates relief to 12 months and to other sectors 
• Round up the cowboys, with business rates advisors being among the only providers of financial advice that do not need a license to practice 

Colliers says the new ‘Duty to Notify’ and ‘Review and Update’ schemes to be rolled out from 1 April, 2026 and mandatory by 1 April, 2029 will only exacerbate the problem as many small businesses that did not previously have to engage with the system will have to update the VOA concerning any changes to their property.

It adds the Government needs to protect small businesses by launching a consultation into rogue rating advisors’ practices and how they can be addressed.

John Webber says: “Labour won the General Election in 2024 promising ‘to abolish the (business rates) tax’ and thereby ‘save the high street’.

“Yet according to the Office of Budget Responsibility figures last year, it is actually planning to raise almost £40 billion annually from the tax by 2029/30.

“Far from reducing this burdensome tax, this government is therefore expanding it- into a more complex, more expensive and more bureaucratic system, and with ‘reforms’ that only tinker around the edges. These do little to support growth or revitalise the high street or the UK economy.

“The government needs to start listening to businesses, to undertake proper feasibility studies before it introduces half-baked policies and to bring in proper reform. Let’s get the (Multiplier) Road to 35 started!”