No automatic pay-out of rate relief in Wales

Retail, Leisure & Hospitality businesses must apply to local authority

23 March 2022
  • Business Rates advice Cooke & Arkwright

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The Welsh Government is to make grant funding available to provide the Retail, Leisure and Hospitality Rates Relief scheme to eligible businesses for 2022-23. The scheme aims to provide support for eligible occupied properties by offering a discount of 50% on non-domestic rates bills for such properties.

This relief is aimed at businesses and other ratepayers in Wales in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors, for example shops, pubs and restaurants, gyms, performance venues and hotels.

The scheme will apply to all eligible businesses; however, there will be a cap on the amount each business can claim across Wales. The total amount of relief available is £110,000 across all properties occupied by the same business. All businesses are required to make a declaration that the amount of relief they are seeking across Wales does not exceed this cap, when applying to individual local authorities.

The relief available in the scheme is not being awarded automatically. Ratepayers will need to apply to each local authority and submit a declaration that they haven’t exceeded the cap in order to benefit from the rate relief.

I have worked with Jeremy Symons over the past three years successfully leasing and buying property in support of my business. I continue to be very pleased with his knowledge of the market and expertise. Our relationship over this time has resulted in acquiring 20,000 sq ft at Capital Business Park in Cardiff, leasing 11,000 sq ft at Southpoint, and subsequently leasing an initial 42,000 sq ft at Parc Bedwas, followed by a succession of expansions of a further 11,000 and then 47,000 sq ft, enabling us to centralise all of our operations at Parc Bedwas in a single 100,000 sq ft facility. The acquisitions were completed at the perfect time for tenant purposes and the rent fixed throughout the term at very economical rates. A job well done.

Bob James, Aerfin