Peter Foley is our resident guru here at CPA, and has been passionately following the shifting world of business rates for many years. With a keen political insight, Peter’s writing reveals how policy change is key to understanding your business rates further, and how this could translate into substantial savings. In his weekly column, Peter also outlines a desired path forward, with changes we’d like to see implemented for a fairer system on the nation's business rates.
Warehouses and industrial premises are springing up wherever you look, as businesses are keen to locate "hubs" as near as possible to their clients. It's a smart move in an age of sky-rocketing fuel costs, and clients' expectations of next-day, or at least rapid, completion of their orders.
However, these warehouses are springing up faster than the VOA's ability to keep up with their accurate valuation. As a result, warehouse owners could be losing significant sums of money, for at least two reasons:
Firstly, no official account is taken of mitigating factors which have reduced the rates of similar buildings in your area; new buildings are given an evaluation based off an estimate of properties in the surrounding area.
Secondly, the official VOA survey takes no account of the quirks of operation and design which make your business "different". This includes aspects such as available storage/production space to limited headroom and mezzanine floors.
There are a host of other factors too, which persuasively question the broad brush, desk-based, assessments of the VOA.
We use a dedicated, experienced and professionally-qualified team of surveyors, trained to identify savings on your rates, through forensically-detailed on-site inspections.
Additionally, all paperwork associated with formal appeals is taken care of by us, but we will keep you apprised of all relevant developments in your appeal, as they happen.
There are only 9 months left of the current rating period, meaning failure to appeal before then will result in a serious loss of savings potential.
Get in touch to find out more.
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