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Discretionary Rate Relief

Published: 11/07/2016

Flintshire County Council’s Community and Enterprise Overview and Scrutiny Committee will consider a report recommending changes to the Business Rates Discretionary Rate Relief (DRR) scheme at a meeting on Wednesday, 13 July. The DRR scheme provides assistance to organisations registered for Business Rates that are either registered charities or established for voluntary and not for profit purposes. Although the DRR scheme is approved annually by Cabinet, the principles of which organisation gets rate relief and at what level, has not been reviewed since 2010. The recommendations are to cease discretionary ‘top-ups’ to those organisations that already benefit from Mandatory Rate Relief and reducing all other Discretionary awards to Voluntary and Not for Profits organisations to a maximum discount of 80%. This means that all organisations that are registered charities or established for voluntary and not for profit purposes will still receive an 80% business rates discount but will be expected to make a 20% payment contribution from 2017-18 To ensure the long term sustainability of the Charitable and Voluntary sectors, the separate introduction of a framework policy to deal with any Hardship cases is being considered by Scrutiny Committee to provide an additional ‘safety net’. The removal of Discretionary ‘top-up’ relief and the scaling back of all other Discretionary Rate Relief awards will generate savings of approximately £87,000 from 2017-18 and beyond. Flintshire County Councils Cabinet Member for Corporate Management, Councillor Billy Mullin, said: “The Council recognises the important role of all charities, voluntary groups and not-for-profit organisations and this recommendation strikes the right balance with continuing to offer generous levels of rate relief but one which helps the Council to bridge budget gaps as a direct result of reduced funding from central government. “To ensure the long term sustainability of the Charitable and Voluntary sectors, we are also proposing the introduction of a clearer framework policy, to deal with any hardship cases.”