Business Rates reduction scheme gets nod

Council reveals who pays the most and least in rates

Tesco has largest rates bill in York

The Government scheme to reduce business rates by 33% for medium sized retailers has been approved. New bills are expected to be sent out shortly.

The decision comes as the Council lifts the veil on business rates (NNDR) in York. A report to a meeting next week says that 2000 local businesses are entirely exempt from paying rates. (Businesses with a rateable value of less than £12,000 are exempt from paying rates).

The bottom 50% of businesses pay an average of less than £1000 per annum.

The biggest bill is paid by Tesco which alone has a bill in York of over £3 million.

7 of the top 10 charges are for superstores, including those at Vangarde.

The top 3 non-retail rates bills are for Nestle (£1.4m), Defra (£930k) and CYC’s West Offices (£730k).

Hotels are large contributors, The Grand having a net charge of £680k, The Principal paying £547k and the StayCity Aparthotel on Paragon Street contributing £343k.

Within the city centre, the highest charges are paid by Marks and Spencer for their Parliament Street store (£527k), Primark (£366k) and Boots (£355k).

The highest rateable value of £7m is for the University of York, although the University is a charity and receives 80% relief on its liability.

Coney Street and Parliament Street still have the highest rateable values. Click here to see a list of the values in each City Centre street.

The York Council is increasingly dependant on business rate income to fund public services.

The report reveals that, although rates are payable on empty properties (after 3 months), the BHS store on Coney Street has been exempted from the charge by the Valuation Office. There are other exemptions mainly for charities and amateur sports clubs.

Business rate levels are set by central government. Income is shared between the local authority and central government.

28% of the York Council’s budget is now funded from business rates .

The Council is expected to submit an expression of interest in the new “Future High Street Fund” at a meeting being held on 22nd March.

NB. The Council refused recently to publish a complete list of long term business rate debtors.

Over £576,000 owed in rates by York businesses

So which firms owe the York Council money?

It has taken long time, but we now know which companies haven’t paid their NNDR (business rates) in York during the last 3 years.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Council has listed 138 traders who have arrears of over £100.

Some have gone into administration while others have decided to repay debts gradually. In some cases, the bailiffs are being sent in

…and it must be said that no business is guaranteed to be a success. Times change, tastes vary and sometimes business do go under. Propriators can be taken ill, some even die.

That is the way life works so there will always be some bad debt.

….. but the total outstanding debt is now over £576,803 and other taxpayers must make up that deficit if public services are to be maintained.

So it is also important that lists of long term debtors are made public.

This allows residents to provide information on the whereabouts of business people and taxpayers who may have absconded. For many years the York Council did this routinely with some useful leads providing a way for money to be reclaimed from those who were seeking to evade their responsibilities.

In some cases, unscrupulous individuals were found to have amassed large arrears before going into administration and then setting up a new company with a similar name and providing much the same service. Often, they operated out of the same premises.

Now a new barrier to transparency has emerged.

The Council is refusing to divulge the names of companies where this may lead to an individual being identified. In some cases, these may be single traders operating under their own name.

The Council says, “some of the business names are names of individual’s and have been withheld as they are exempt under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act (2000), as they constitute personal information under the Data Protection Act (1998)”.

Hmm!

The names of some companies have, however, been revealed. This means that the names of their directors can be found simply be searching records at Company’s House (which can now be done “on line”)

The Councils position doesn’t entirely add up.

Debtor information like this was published as recently as 2013 by the Council.

They also take legal action to recover debts (essential before bailiffs can be used) and these preceding are not taken “in camera”. The information is in the public domain.

In this case we think that the public interest outweighs any right to anonymity and we will appeal against the Council’s refusal to provide the names of business owners.

In the meantime, the list of those debtors owing more than £100 is provided here.

No doubt the Councils finance department would appreciate any information about the whereabouts of any who may have absconded.

Freedom of Information: some excellent responses but others evasive

Let’s start with an example of good practice.

The York Council was asked, via the “What do they know” web site, for information on the numbers of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPN) issued for Fly tipping, Fly posting and graffiti.  Similar information for other offences was already posted by the Authority on its open data website.

A response was provided within a few days with the Council agreeing to add information for fly tipping and flyposting to the Open Data website. This means that information will be updated regularly. The question about flyposting was prompted by an epidemic of “Fair” posters which appeared on the west of the City.

We look forward to the open data website being updated shortly

The York Council says that it does not hold statistics on the number of prosecutions for graffiti which have been undertaken. It points to the police as a potential source of information claiming that the force could extract graffiti cases from the more general “criminal damage” heading.

We have had less luck with North Yorkshire Police.

We have been attempting for over a year now to get speed and casualty information from them in an attempt to understand how it drives the deployment of their speed camera vans.

We wanted to see trend information for sites regularly monitored by the vans. We expected that management information would demonstrate that the mean/average speeds recorded showed a downward trend, that the number of vehicles exceeding the prevailing limit would be falling and that accident levels on the monitored roads would also be showing a downward trend.

The most recent report from the police indicates that they don’t hold any of this information nor have they tried to correlate the stats provided by NYFR when they deploy their speed monitoring equipment on road around the county.

We find it astonishing that objective results figures of this sort are not being regularly monitored by those managing the, very expensive, camera van programme.

Nor can the York Council bask in any glory. In February, we asked which businesses had not paid their NNDR (Rates) bills in each of the last 3 years.

The request was turned down on the, entirely specious, grounds that it might influence the result of a by election which was taking place last February. Eventually the Information Commissioner ruled that the information had to be released and it duly was on 26th September.

It revealed that the Council were chasing £576,803.04 in arrears that had accumulated over the last 3 years.

The response did not reveal the names of the businesses involved.

We asked for that information on 1st October but, as yet, we have had no reply.