Welcome to the new Rating Surveyors’ Association Membership Year! I am most honoured to serve as your President.
2025 promises to be another interesting year as the new Labour government takes forward its reform agenda for business rates in England. Last year saw the launch of a discussion paper by HM Treasury at the time of the Chancellor’s 2024 Budget entitled “Transforming Business Rates” and which seeks collaboration from stakeholders around a number of key reforms proposed. These centre around the themes identified as needing attention: a fairer business rates system, incentivising investment and growth and making the business rates system fit for the 21st century. As such the coming year is likely to see business rates avoidance and evasion being looked at again with a possible General Anti-Avoidance rule (GAAR) being consulted on, new regulations being introduced around the information duties contained in the 2023 Non-Domestic Rating Act and a firm agenda being established for greater transparency of information by the Valuation Office. The Association will have a part to play in this collaborative agenda as government seeks to introduce measures to enable wider appeal reforms to coincide with the 2029 rating revaluation. There many also be changes to current rules on Improvement and Empty Rates reliefs once reviews around the efficacy of those reliefs has been undertaken.
And of course 2025 will see us enter the last year of the 2023 Rating List prior to the 2026 rating revaluation – which has been confirmed will take place across the UK in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We will see published, towards the end of the year, the proposed draft List assessments together with, in England, details of the government’s new multiplier regime, assuming the recently published Non-Domestic Rates (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill becomes law as is expected.
I also hope that members will shortly see a significantly revitalised and enhanced Association website, which will have a new, on-going focus to ensure we regularly capture news items and features around our Education and CPD agenda, Association events and also introduce a payment function for membership fees that hopefully enhances your experience of the Association. I am delighted that Bjorn Bowles and Michael Hampton-Riddington from the committee will now be dedicating time to take this agenda forwards in a purposeful way and ensure the website and its functionality is a key focus for the Committee.
As we all know, the rating system is now unlikely to be replaced as a property tax; rather we will see the current regime honed and hopefully reformed in a positive way over the next five years. The Officers and Committee of the Association will be doing all it can to work collaboratively with wider stakeholders from Government, The Valuation Officer Agency/Assessors and Local Authorities to ensure that any reforms are fair and work for all stakeholders with transparency and fairness. We shall also be strengthening our ties and engagement with the other professional bodes to ensure that a strong voice from the rating surveyor profession is heard in the context of the government’s reform agenda. There is a lot of work that the Association does in the background to aid this and I would reassure the membership that the committee is working tirelessly to improve the system that many stakeholders want to see reformed more aggressively. There is still a long way to go but it is important that we continue the good work done so far and continue to voice our concerns around systems and processes introduced if they fail to meet the criteria of fairness and transparency that we seek.
Finally, we are a listening committee so I and the committee are always open to your suggestions, questions and concerns, and I hope that you will reach out to me in the coming year and let me know your thoughts and comments. Please send any of these to me at President@ratingsurveyorsassociation.org.
I wish you all well and I should like to express my sincere thanks for your continued support.
Richard Williamson
President