Rates retention services in England and Wales

Reading Borough Council

Reading is a prosperous Thames Valley city with a strong caseload of high-end international finance and technology companies locating head office premises in the City and its surrounding areas. With very close proximity to the Heathrow airport, and excellent local employment profiles, this part of the Thames Valley is a prime choice for international companies looking for prestigious head office premises without London rents, and with space to grow.

We accordingly agreed with the Council that a targeted exercise would be completed, and which would identify undervaluation and missing floor area at such high-end premises, clearly in so doing targeting ratepayers with the capacity to pay, a key factor following the COVID 19 outbreak. Under current trials, missing RV of over £2.5m has been identified and reported, the exercise is ongoing, and we expect to exceed this performance by this summer.

London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Tower Hamlets are another longstanding client of Rates Retention services, with whom we have been working on a number of assignments since the system began in 2013. Much of the early modelling of very high end under valuations and of missing floor space in offices and of missing retail units was modelled successfully in Tower Hamlets, and this research has underpinned successful taxbase building assignments taken forward elsewhere in London and the South East. The modelling completed here is capable of delivering literally millions of pounds of additional RV within busy city centre locations, and is deliberately targeted at ratepayers with the capacity to pay.

London Borough of Harrow

The London Borough of Harrow are another repeat client, who swiftly took the view that the Council's best interests would not be served by contingent fees, so took the precaution of setting up the contract on the basis of annually renewable fixed fees. This "managed services" approach to the service, has enabled an effective partnership between the parties so that workstreams can easily be picked up by the Council when local specialists including Council inspection staff are better placed to do so. It has not stopped us picking up some substantial leads along the way, including the identification of major programmes of works at a hospital within the Council's list, ultimately leading to an increase in RV at the site of over £700,000, more than doubling the previous List entry. Additionally Harrow has picked up on trends occurring in its geographical area and has been able to work with the GLA to ensure a more strategic view is taken across London for the overall benefit of the London Pool and therefore Harrow and all London authorities, an additional unplanned benefit which was very much welcomed.

Anglia Revenues Partnership

The Partnership is another long standing client with whom we have worked since 2013. Current highlights of our work here include our pilot designed to identify missing units present at otherwise Agricultural Land, which have identified and reported a small number of high value units for each Council within the Partnership. The RV so far identified comfortably exceeds £2m, and demonstrates that high value RV is capable of identification and reporting within rural settings.