You can apply for a small business rate relief if you occupy a property with a rateable value of £15,000 or less.

Your business must occupy either:

• one property with a rateable value less than £15,000
• one main property plus other properties, as long as those other properties have rateable values of less than £2,900.

The total rateable value of all the occupied properties must be under £28,000. We'll only apply the relief to the main property.

Apply for small business rate relief

Find out your rateable value of your property (Valuation Office Agency website)

How much relief you can get

The relief depends on the property's rateable value.

Relief you can get

Rateable value of main property	Amount of small business rate relief
£1 to £12,000	100 per cent
£12,001 to £14,999	Percentage reduction on a sliding scale from 100 per cent to 0 per cent

If your business takes on another property, which would otherwise mean the loss of small business rate relief, you're still entitled to relief on the first property for 12 months from the date on which you occupied the new property.

After you apply

We'll consider your application and tell you of the decision. If you're unsuccessful, we'll write explaining why you don't qualify.

If you're successful, we'll apply the relief to your business rate account.

Tell us about changes

You must then tell us within four weeks of any of these changes:

• you occupy another property
• there's an increase in rateable value of a property you occupy in another local authority area.

You must make a new application for relief if you've occupied an extra property.

You'll need to give notice of an increase in rateable value in writing.

New schemes

We have implemented three new small business rate relief schemes, helping struggling smaller businesses to cope with the rise in their business rates. The schemes are:

Supporting small businesses

Businesses that received reduced entitlement to small business rate relief will have their 2017-18 bills limited to an increase of £600 or five per cent (whichever is lower).

Additional local discretionary relief

The government allocated us £921,000 for 2017-18, to assist local businesses most affected by the recent increases in business rates. Following on from a survey undertaken earlier this year, the Council resolved to target this additional relief towards smaller businesses.

Increases in business rates from 2016-17 to 2017-18 for those with a rateable value of less than £100,000 will be limited to an inflationary increase.

Please note: Only businesses in occupation of their premises on 31 March 2017 and 1 April 2017 are entitled. Certain businesses will not qualify for this reduction (for example pay-day lenders and large national organisations).

Relief for pubs

Public houses with a rateable value below £100,000 may receive a set discount of £1,000.

What does it mean for individual businesses?

Qualifying businesses don't need to apply - the discount will be awarded to entitled businesses and a revised bill will be sent showing the reduction.

These additional reliefs were applied to accounts during October 2017. Any business that thinks it should have received a reduction, and didn't receive a revised bill, should contact the Business Rates Section.