Small Business Rate Relief
This is a new relief available from 1 April 2005.

Eligible businesses with rateable values of below £5,000 will get 50% rate relief on their liability. This relief will decrease on a sliding scale of 1% for every £100 of rateable value over £5,000, up to £9,999.

The relief is available to ratepayers with either:

• one property, or
• one main property and other additional properties, providing the additional properties do not have individual rateable values of more than £2,200 and the combined rateable value of all the properties is under £15,000 (or £21,500 in London). The threshold for the combined rateable value is dependent on the location of the main property.

In addition to this relief on liability, eligible businesses with rateable values of between £10,000 and £14,999 (or between £10,000 and £21,499 in London) will have their liability calculated using the small business multiplier at 48.1p.

The Small Business Rate Relief scheme is funded by a supplement on the rate bill of those businesses not eligible for the relief. This supplement is built into the standard multiplier.

New arrangements from 1 October 2006
Under the new arrangements eligible businesses will be required to apply for Small Business Rate Relief only once between each revaluation of non-domestic properties provided certain defined circumstances do not change.

• The new arrangements will first apply where applications for relief are made in respect of the financial year 2007/08
• Provided your circumstances do not change, eligible businesses will not be required to make a further application until the financial year 2010/11
• An additional condition of entitlement to Small Business Rate Relief is that you must notify the Council of particular changes in circumstances that may affect your entitlement. *These changes must be notified to us within four weeks starting on the day after the change occurred.

*The circumstances in which eligible businesses receiving relief are required to notify the Council of a change are:

• Where the rateable value of any property you occupy in another Council area increases. Your notification must be made to us in writing.
• Should you occupy any property, which is not mentioned, on your previous application for relief, notification should be made by way of a new application to the Council.

Failure to notify the Council within four weeks of the date of change will mean that you will no longer be entitled to the relief.

If you notify the Council after the four week period, you will lose the relief from the day after the date of change until the day on which the Council is notified.

If your change in circumstances is such that you are no longer eligible for the relief, entitlement will end from the date of change.

Application forms with guidance notes and the change of circumstance form are available here in Adobe's pdf format. These forms can be downloaded and on completion returned to the address shown on the form.

 Application form and guidance notes for Small Business Rate Relief (85 kb)

 Change of circumstances notification form (42 kb)