In RBKC foreign speculators have forced commercial property prices through the roof. So small shopkeepers renting hugely valuable property are not only forced to pay high rents, but massive business rates as well.
Yet high property values do not result in higher income for small business owners.
On the contrary, K & C's uber-gentrification has resulted in fewer residents spending only in the most fashionable, high-end stores.
On average small local businesses across RBKC must now pay another 25% business rates on already high rent bills and on top of other rising costs.
At the same time, there is ever more unfair competition from online retail paying little or nothing in business rates or other expenses.
From Portobello Road to Knightsbridge our remaining small, specialist, privately owned shops and restaurants will disappear.
Innovation will be gone, replaced by yet more chains.
Hundreds of small landlords will lose their income: while being forced to pay the business rates on their empty shops.
Please sign this PETITION to a Government which talks the talk but won't walk the walk when it comes to encouraging small business.
No wonder some of our high streets look like war zones.
Also, vent your anger by writing to the following:
For Philip Hammond: <public.enquiries@hmtreasury.
For the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan: <mayor@london.gov.uk>
For Theresa May: <email.number10@gov.uk>
For Victoria Borwick MP: <victoria.borwick.mp@
There’s also a Parliamentary petition: petition.parliament.uk/
Business rates are a racket, chargeable on businesses whether or not they are profitable. We should all object to this rise. Shopkeepers do not benefit from rising property prices, because they are tenants.
ReplyDeleteBy comparison, council tax is far too low. Residents have votes. Shopkeepers don't. It's time for a radical rethink of business rates. It's a 400 year old tax.
The government needs to understand that Javid’s proposed business rate rises are a monumental mistake. These unfairly target London and the South. Our high streets are already in a fragile state - squatted by bookies, estate agents, burger behemoths, big chains’ mini-supermarkets, and cloned coffee shops at the expense of the traditional outlets locals actually want. Most small and indie traders simply cannot afford this extra tax burden.
ReplyDeleteIt is galling to hear the constant refrain - “Britain is open for business’ - from a government whose action will close many businesses down.
Agreed. Hundreds of small local businesses will close. This will leave often small landlords without income, but forced to pick up this unreasonable tab.
ReplyDeleteThe point is well made about the archaic nature of business rates. Rates were introduced late in the reign of Elizabeth 1 to support the deserving paupers of each parish. They were not meant to provide the current government with a huge hunk of cash extracted from the newly pauperised!
Where's Victoria Borwick & Greg Hands?
ReplyDeleteInterestingly LBC Iain Dale had a guy on from the Adam Smith Institute on 17th Feb who claimed live on air that Business Rates do not affect businesses only the Landlords and that paying Business Rates does not affect profits of a business at all ???
ReplyDelete