Autumn Statement: Shops face £500m rate rise as relief is scrapped

George Osborne promised to extend 100% rate relief to the smallest businesses for another year, but a separate £1,500 relief for another 278,000 small firms is to be discontinued

Business rates bills for more than a quarter of a million small retailers, bars and cafés are set to rise by nearly £500m following the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement.

George Osborne promised to extend 100 per cent rate relief to the smallest businesses for another year. But a separate £1,500 relief for another 278,000 small firms is to be discontinued.

The discount was introduced two years ago – with the initial a £1,000 saving being increased to £1,500 last year. The scrapping of the relief was heavily criticised.

Business rates experts calculate that bills for those traders will increase by around 20 per cent next year at a time when the rates bill – a tax on all commercial premises – has been blamed for the high street’s struggles.

Business rates expert Paul Turner-Mitchell, who produced the figures based on local government data on how many claimed the relief last year, said: “This is yet another increase in a tax already the highest in the world and highly uncompetitive.”

Jerry Schurder, head of business rates at the surveyor Gerald Eve, said: “Retailers will be distraught that this relief has been removed, and it is the smallest and most-vulnerable shops on the most down-at-heel high streets that will be affected the most.”