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April next year is only five months away now and with it will come the Non-Domestic rating revaluation.
New rateable values will be applied to all business premises, including public houses. As rating adviser to the Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association our Senior Partner, Chris Tattersall, has now agreed a basis of valuation for licensed property rating for the revaluation with the Chief Executive's Office of the Valuation Office Agency.
The agreement forms a new "Approved Guide for the valuation of Licensed Premises". This sets the parameters within which the Valuation Office will make their assessments and the ratepayers can then challenge them by way of appeal.
As assessments are based on the trade considered to be maintainable at the property, occupiers and owners need to check the new rateable values (due to be published on 31st December 1999) and appeal if appropriate.
We can expect that unqualified and largely unscrupulous rating service "cowboys" will be very active in the public house sector. Publicans must be prepared to resist this onslaught, for experience shows them to be very vulnerable to smooth talk - and a large bill. The cowboys will probably be able to exert even more pressure than currently because it is likely that appeal time limits will be introduced.
The new regulations covering appeals procedures (including time limits) and transitional arrangements have not yet been published, but will come into effect for the revaluation. Property Digests will be published as soon as we have the details.
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