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Business rates continue to be a major concern

business rates continue to be a major concern

17 May 2013

Alliance Boots and Morrisons have made fresh calls to the Government to reform business rates.
The two retailers made their submissions ahead of the first evidence session on Tuesday for the inquiry into the UK retail sector.

Morrisons said that “steep rises in business rates and lack of certainty in the rate-setting mechanism, are damaging confidence and weighing heavily on investment decisions” – a view which Alliance Boots and many others agree with.

Alliance Boots said that “the most significant challenge to operating successfully on high streets and town centres is business rates”.

Jeweller, F Hinds explained how it had to turn down “several” shops because the rates bill was so high and “often” higher than the rent itself – a situation faced by many SMEs.

We agree that businesses need to continue to lobby government to tackle this issue and hopefully this inquiry will go some way into making the Government realise the effect that the current business rates are having on the high street.

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Service charges – the bad news keeps coming for tenants!

A few months ago, we discussed a case where the Court of Appeal ruled that the wording of a lease precluded the tenant from arguing that certain costs should not have been included in the service charge calculation. A recent high-profile case concerns a broadly similar issue, this time in relation to the proportion of the landlord’s costs payable by a tenant.

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