Four things go wrong on a rates bill more often than anything else. Three of them we can form a view on from public data. The fourth needs the bill in front of us.
Relief is available where the rateable value falls below the small business threshold, and it tapers across the upper band. It isn’t applied automatically in every case. You have to claim it, and a change of occupier is where it most often falls off a bill. Where it was missed, it can in principle be backdated.
This one you can do yourself. It is a form on your council’s website and it costs nothing to submit. What we add is telling you whether you qualify before you spend the time. If you’d rather not deal with it, hand it over on the same 10% success fee.
Source: Small Business Rate Relief (GOV.UK)
In England, qualifying retail, hospitality and leisure premises are charged at a lower multiplier than the standard one. Whether you get it turns on how your council has coded the property in its billing system. Coding is where it goes wrong. A restaurant coded as a plain shop pays the higher rate quietly, year after year. So does a property whose use changed and whose code did not.
This is the check that needs your bill. The rating list shows what the property is. Only the bill shows what you are charged for it. Divide one by the other and the multiplier you are on falls out in seconds.
Source: Business rates multipliers for qualifying retail, hospitality or leisure (GOV.UK)
The Valuation Office sets rateable values, largely from a rate per square metre applied to the trading area. We hold the same detailed valuations for every premises in London. That lets us put yours next to comparable premises on your own street, not a borough average.
Sitting above the street median isn’t proof of an error. It is a reason to look at the evidence behind the valuation. That is what the Valuation Office’s Check and Challenge process is for.
Source: Check and challenge your business rates valuation (GOV.UK)
In England, transitional arrangements and supporting small business relief limit how far a bill can move year to year. A saving that looks real on paper can be absorbed by a cap and never reach your bank account. We check the cash position before telling you a number is worth pursuing.
The allowance reduces an employer’s National Insurance bill. Where it was never switched on, it can be claimed for earlier tax years. Most owners we meet have never been asked about it. Three questions settle whether it applies, and it is the largest single recovery we have made for a restaurant so far. Ask when we speak.
What we do not publish is the case itself: how the evidence is assembled, how a challenge is put together, and the order in which things have to be done. That part is what the fee covers.
If there's nothing to save, we say so.
Find it on your street, see the initial assessment, then decide whether to speak to us.