To ask Her Majesty's Government whether councils will still have access to their year one allocation of hardship relief funds for small businesses facing business rate rises, in the event that they fail to distribute unallocated funds before April.
Answered on
7 February 2018
Local authorities are responsible for the design and implementation of their local schemes and for distributing the relief from the £300 million discretionary fund. The vast majority of billing authorities have begun implementing the relief and providing this support to eligible businesses.
However, the Government has been clear that it is unacceptable that some authorities have failed to act quickly enough. In order to expedite delivery, we have written to local authority leaders and MPs and engaged directly with billing software suppliers. Since October, we have published and regularly update the list of local authorities which have started to rebill.
Following, the end of the financial year any unallocated funds will be returned to Government and businesses stand to miss out, so it is imperative that authorities take all necessary action to avoid this.