As many as 10,000 retail properties may have received visits from bailiffs as they struggled to pay higher business rates since last April, new figures suggest.
The estimate was made following an investigation by ratings adviser Altus Group, which forecast that around 41,000 business premises were referred by councils to bailiffs in the first five months after the April 2017 business rates revaluation - which is being used to determine property taxes over the next five years.
The findings are based on information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, with councils asked to provide details of how many businesses had been referred to bailiffs for collection.
Details were provided on more than 1.37 million properties from 247 local authorities in England and Wales from 1 April to 31 August 2017. In total, 28,355 business premises liable for business rates were referred to a bailiff for enforcement.
In arriving at the estimate, the Altus Group took into account the 1.98 million properties liable for business rates, and calculated that a total of 40,965 companies were referred to bailiffs over the five-month period - a rise of 9% on 2016/17 figures.
Although the businesses were not broken down by sector, Altus confirmed that retail premises contributed to almost one in four of all properties liable for business rates, accounting for around 23% of premises.
Alex Probyn, Altus Group’s UK president of business rates, warned that some retailers would “have to absorb very large increases in their bills” which could spiral by a further “32% plus 3% inflation in April”.
“Those bills could be more affordable if the playing field with their online competitors was levelled,” he said.
“The current, deeply unfair system of transitional adjustment severely limits the amount by which bills can go down, meaning many businesses are paying disproportionately high bills in locations where local economies are underperforming and values are falling. Now is the time, more than ever, that businesses need to carefully understand their new rates assessment and to check that what they’re being told to pay is indeed accurate and correct.”
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