Your business rates bill went up. What you can actually challenge
The bill is a calculation, and the calculation is rarely the thing that is wrong. The rateable value underneath it is, and that is the part that can be challenged.
Problems, in order · Part of Outsourced General Counsel
A business rates bill can be challenged where the rateable value behind it is wrong or a relief has not been applied. Dinmore Bell establishes what is physically there, tests the assessment against it, and runs the Check and Challenge stages through to a settled position, instructing a rating surveyor where the valuation argument needs one.
A rates bill looks like a tax demand, and most businesses treat it as one. It is not. It is a calculation, and the input that drives it is a valuation of your property carried out by someone who has probably never been inside it.
That distinction matters because the bill itself is rarely wrong. The council multiplies a rateable value by a multiplier, applies whatever reliefs it knows about, and sends the total. If the number is too high, it is almost always because the rateable value is too high, or because a relief you qualify for was never applied. Those are two different problems with two different routes, and paying the bill does not close either of them.
What the rateable value actually represents
The rateable value is set by the Valuation Office Agency, not by your local council, and it is broadly the annual rent the property could have been let for at a fixed valuation date. It is a hypothetical rent for a hypothetical letting. It is not what you pay your landlord, and it is not what the building is worth.
Because it is hypothetical, it is built from assumptions: floor areas, the use the space is put to, its physical condition, the quality of the location, and comparisons with other properties nearby. Every one of those assumptions can be wrong, and in an estate of any size, some of them usually are.
The errors we see most often are dull rather than dramatic. Floor areas measured from plans that were superseded by a fit-out. Mezzanines counted as full-value space when they are storage. A yard included that has not been usable for years. Two units treated as one, or one treated as two. A property assessed as offices when half of it has been warehouse for a decade.
What you can challenge, and what you cannot
You can challenge the facts the valuation rests on. You can challenge the valuation itself, on the basis that comparable properties are assessed lower. You can ask for the assessment to be changed where something has physically altered: a demolition, a conversion, a split, a long-running closure of the road outside.
You cannot challenge the multiplier, and you cannot challenge the bill on the basis that trade has been poor. That is worth saying plainly, because it is where most conversations start and it is a dead end. Rates follow the property, not the profitability of the business inside it.
Reliefs are separate again. Small business relief, retail relief, empty property relief, charitable relief and transitional arrangements are applied by the billing authority, and they are applied on the information the authority holds. If that information is out of date, the relief does not appear. This is the cheapest thing on the list to fix and the most commonly missed, particularly where a business has moved, split a unit, or taken on additional space.
The process, in the order it actually happens
In England, challenges run through the Valuation Office Agency's Check, Challenge, Appeal service. The names describe the sequence. Check is where you confirm or correct the facts held about the property. Challenge is where you argue the valuation, with evidence. Appeal is the tribunal stage, and most matters never reach it.
The order is not optional, and that is the single most useful thing to know before starting. You cannot argue the valuation until the facts are agreed, which means a case that begins with a strong argument about comparable rents and a shaky measurement of the floor area will stall. Time spent getting the physical facts right at the Check stage is what makes the Challenge stage short.
Evidence is the other half. An assertion that the assessment feels high achieves nothing. What moves an assessment is a measured survey, the assessments of genuinely comparable properties, and a clear account of what has physically changed and when.
What this looks like across an estate
For a single site, this is a contained piece of work. For a business with fifteen sites, it is a different exercise, and it is usually where the money is. Assessments across an estate are rarely wrong in the same way, so the work is a sweep: pull every assessment, compare each against what is physically there now, and rank them by the size of the gap.
The pattern that recurs is an estate that has changed steadily while the assessments have not. Units taken and given back. Space reconfigured. A site mothballed for two years and never reported. Each individual error is small enough to have been ignored at the time, and the total across the estate is not small at all.
What Dinmore Bell does here
Dinmore Bell runs the challenge as a project rather than a piece of correspondence. That means establishing what is physically there, obtaining and reading the assessment history, identifying which sites are worth challenging and which are not, instructing and directing a rating surveyor where the valuation argument needs one, and carrying the matter through Check and Challenge to a settled position.
It also means holding the outcome. A rateable value that has been corrected once will drift again as the estate changes, so the assessments sit in the same register as the leases, the renewals and the break dates, and they are reviewed when the property changes rather than when the next bill lands.
What Dinmore Bell does not do is prepare your tax computation or take a position on how a relief interacts with your corporation tax return. That is your accountant's work, and it stays there.
Where a specialist is needed
Two points on this subject need a named specialist, and it is worth being direct about which.
A contested valuation argument, where the case turns on the rental evidence and the analysis of comparable assessments, is the work of a rating surveyor. Dinmore Bell instructs and directs one and runs the matter around them, rather than substituting for that expertise.
Anything that crosses into your tax position, including how relief interacts with your accounts and what is recoverable in which period, is for your accountant or tax adviser. Where a challenge reaches the Valuation Tribunal and the argument becomes a technical valuation dispute, representation by a rating specialist is the right call and Dinmore Bell will say so rather than run it.
Dinmore Bell provides an outsourced General Counsel function for founder-led businesses, owning work of this kind end to end rather than advising on it and handing it back.
Common questions
- Can I challenge my business rates because trade has been poor?
- No. Rates follow the property rather than the performance of the business occupying it. The challengeable part is the rateable value: the facts it rests on, and the valuation built from them. Poor trading may open a conversation with the billing authority about payment arrangements, but it is not a ground for reducing the assessment.
- Do I have to keep paying while a challenge is running?
- Yes. A challenge does not suspend the bill, and non-payment invites recovery action that is entirely separate from the valuation argument. Where an assessment is reduced, the reduction is applied and the overpayment refunded, so the correct approach is to keep paying and pursue the challenge in parallel.
- How long does a rates challenge take?
- It varies widely with the complexity of the property and the state of the evidence. The Check stage is quicker where the physical facts are clear and slower where the property has been altered without records. The most reliable way to shorten it is to get a proper measured survey and the alteration history in place before starting, rather than during.
- Is this something my accountant handles?
- Usually not. A rates challenge is a property valuation matter rather than a tax computation, and it runs through the Valuation Office Agency rather than through your accounts. Your accountant remains the right person for how any recovery is treated in your books and for your wider tax position.
- We have fifteen sites. Where do we start?
- With a sweep rather than a case. Pull every assessment, compare each against what is physically on the ground today, and rank the sites by the size of the gap. That tells you which two or three are worth the work, and it usually finds at least one relief that was never applied.
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