Member Article

Morrisons and Asda part of retail consortium calling for business rates reform

Over 100 organisations, including many from Yorkshire in the retail, manufacturing, property, hospitality and service industries call for political parties to commit to fundamental reform of the business rates system.

Yorkshire businesses that have signed the open letter include Tata Steel, Morrisons, York-based Whitbread, Asda, and Costcutter.

The FSB, the British Retail Consortium, the British Chambers of Commerce, Sainsbury’s, M&S, KFC, Paperchase, Heineken, Costa, Hammerson, Co-op, TGI Friday and Ann Summers have also signed the letter. More than one hundred businesses from across industry have come together to highlight the ‘critical problem’ of business rates and asked the political parties to commit before the General Election to a fundamental review of the system.

The system is no longer fit for purpose according to the consortium, and has led to punitive rates that are higher than any other property tax in Europe and one of the highest in the OECD. The one hundred and seven organisations from across manufacturing, services, property, leisure, hospitality and retail have signed an open letter to the three main political party leaders that appears this morning in a full page advert in The Daily Telegraph. The wide coalition of signatories, co-ordinated by the British Retail Consortium, who range from FTSE 100 companies to SMEs, say that business rates are “no longer fit for the purpose of the 21st century” and should be revamped to unleash investment in order to create new skilled and entry level jobs on the high street, bring new and expanded businesses into local communities and support other industrial investment. Helen Dickinson, Director General of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Today’s open letter proposes that the political parties should make a commitment to look at deeper reform of business rates if they form the next government after the election.

“The sheer breadth of industries represented shows the strength of our collective belief that the existing system is no longer fit for purpose and that we will support the work of a future government to carry out reforms so that we can all play our part in growing the UK economy.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .