Tuesday, Nov 25, 2008

A bit off-beat - but it proves GBH knows very little indeed ...

Property Week: Pre-Budget Report: Empty rates holiday - Join the debate

See comment #2 >>> The Chancellor obviously has little grasp in reality. As a specialist developer of small industrial units with a few empty small units available around the UK, this change will have little or no impact on our empty rates bill. I presume he is looking to help owners and occupiers of lock up garages? I didn't realise that these made up 70% of the empty commercial buildings in the UK.

Posted by fahrenheit451 @ 12:02 PM (449 views) Add Comment

5 Comments

1. charlie brooker said...

Isn't GHB the date rape drug?

Tuesday, November 25, 2008 12:04PM Report Comment
 

2. fahrenheit451 said...

Now lets put this in perspective.

A 400 sq ft office (5 persons max) has a rateable value of about £5,000 to £10,000 depending on what part of the country you are in and if it is in the town centre or in a farmyard.
For 1,000 sq ft small office unit for 10 persons (including space for a server, printers, filing & storage) is over £15,000 rateable value, on average ish.

Of course the way round this is to break down a property into smaller units and then allow tenants to lets multiple groups of units depending upon what they need.
Ultimately whilst this is a good idea to allow rate relief on vacant units, it would be much better to provide the stimulus to SME businesses and get new startups going to take over from the mass of redundancies that are around the corner.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008 12:11PM Report Comment
 

3. mark wadsworth said...

Morons, the lot of them:

"Martin Davenport, rating partner at Hartnell Taylor Cook, said: '[Scrapping empty property rates] will help small businesses..."

Ah yes! It will help those thousands of small businesses up and down the land who occupy empty properties ... ah.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008 02:59PM Report Comment
 

4. drewster said...

Great, just great. Why not suspend council tax for empty flats to help out landlords while we're at it?

Tuesday, November 25, 2008 03:42PM Report Comment
 

5. This comment has been removed as it was found to be in breach of our Blog Policies.

 

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