Some pubs and bars In Northern Ireland will see their business rates bills rise by more than 600% as a result of yesterday’s revaluation.
Draft rateable values were announced yesterday for all 73,000 non-domestic properties, including shops, offices and factories, their first officially revaluation in 13 years.
Speaking at Estates Gazette’s first Belfast Question Time event last night, Ben Turtle, head of Savills Northern Ireland, said: “Rates are a huge issue. They are disproportionately high when you compare them to rents. But we are pleased this ruling has started and hopefully we can get some clarity on the matter so we can give some more confidence to our clients.”
The new values will be used to calculate business rate bills from 1 April 2015. overall growth is in the region of 8%. The office sector shows little change, although with some increases outside of Belfast.
The biggest swings affect retail and leisure businesses. Many high street shops and some shopping centres will see a decrease in rateable values of as much as 50%, while many of the edge of town retail parks will see an rise of at least 18%. The largest food stores show an increase in rateable value of 40%.
BBC Northern Ireland business and economics editor John Campbell said: “The old Belfast prime pitch of Donegal Place and Royal Avenue are seeing big reductions. But the Cathedral Quarter didn’t exist in 2001 as a place to go out so the NAVs were tiny.”
And he pointed to two bars in the quarter which would suffer exceptional rises. “The Dirty Onion NAV is up from £32,500 to £135,000,” he said. “Muriels is up 645%. Many are going up 400-500%. They would have expected this. But it’s one thing to expect it, it’s another thing dealing with it. I expect lots of these things will eventually wend their way to the Lands Tribunal.”
But fellow panellist, PwC chief economist Northern Ireland Esmond Birnie, warned: “A rate revaluation and reduction will not solve the problems of the high street. There is a deeper structural change in the way we do retail.”
The business rates revaluation that had been due to take place in England, Scotland and Wales in 2015 has already been delayed until 2017.
See next week’s Estates Gazette for a full report on the Question Time event.
