The Scottish Government have passed legislation which exempts day nurseries from business rates for three years with effect from 1 April 2018.  

See link: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2018/65/contents/made

It is possible your Council may not know about this relief as yet and will may not yet have their system set up to grant relief automatically, so we would suggest you should make contact with the Council immediately, before the bills for this financial year coming are sent out.

By doing this, hopefully you will not have to pay anything going forward from 1 April 2018. Some of you may have facilities which trades as a day nursery, but the Assessor may not have classified it as a Nursery. If you have any trouble getting the Council to agree to the relief, please let us know and we will attempt to sort on your behalf. 

In terms of our clients Revaluation appeal(s), we are still progressing these appeals on your behalf for two reasons:  

  1. Any reduction we achieve in your Rateable Value (and ultimately your rates payable) will be backdated to 1 April 2017, and, as you know, you have been liable for rates from 1 April 2017 31 March 2018; and
  2. The legislation states that this exemption is only for a period of three years from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2021. However, your Rateable Value will stay in force for a minimum of 5 years therefore it is important that this is kept as low as possible, as potentially you may be liable for rates payments again if the Relief falls away on 31 March 2021. 

Many of our clients have been asking how matters are progressing with their rates appeals. Apart from the odd or one or two, we are still waiting on the Assessor to cite these for discussion, which we expect will not be until early 2019. 

We know we indicated that we may look to fast track the discussions via the ‘hardship’ route, but I am sure you will appreciate this would be be difficult now given the exemption has been granted.   

We will be back in touch as soon as the Assessor is ready to discuss your appeal(s), but should you have any questions please feel free to get in touch with our Gary Walton via contact our team at www.businessratesadvice.com