The commercial real estate consultancy made a freedom of information request to the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) concerning the CCA and ‘find my business rates’ online systems.

This revealed that in a five month period between March and August 2018 over 85% of 505 respondents who had not yet completed the check stage of the process, said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied (17% and 69% respectively) with the new system and only 3.2% were very satisfied.

These figures largely mirror findings for the first year of CCA (April 2017 to March 2018) where the request showed over 88% of the 2085 respondents in the period said they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the system.

Colliers says putting the figures together shows that 87% of users trying to get their business rates checked were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied (17% and 71% respectively) out of 2590 respondents in the 17-month period since CCA was introduced on 1 April 2017.

It requires ratepayers to check the information held on the property by the VOA as the first step in the process. Multiple properties held in a portfolio must each be claimed separately and the identity of the ratepayer must be proven with supporting documentation, making the process difficult and cumbersome, the consultancy said.

The VOA has also announced that the number of appeals started in the 15 months since the 2017 rates revaluation (and since CCA came into play) have fallen by more than 86% compared to the corresponding period following the 2010 revaluation. 

Proceedings to challenge VOA business rates assessments have only begun on only 36,310 properties in England, which reflect less than 2% of the 1.88m properties assessed for business rates. There were 266,870 appeals (over seven times as many) in the same period after 2010, Colliers calculates.

John Webber, head of business rates at Colliers International, said: ‘Over complicated procedures, lack of guidance and a largely un-navigable new on-line portal are discouraging those with good cases from challenging their bills.

‘At the very least businesses now need to employ agents to help them get through the system, whereas before many could appeal directly themselves.’

Collier says its analysis undermines a VOA satisfaction survey of over 2000 companies which got past the check stage and which found 47% were ‘satisfied’ or very ‘satisfied’ with their experience. The consultancy points out that 71% of those whose cases have been resolved now have a reduction in their rates bills, making it hard to assess whether they are satisfied because they have won their cases or whether because they were happy with the system.

Webber said: ‘Turning the figures on their head, 47% satisfied, still leaves the majority (53%) either impartial or dissatisfied, and that’s with 71% of them successful in their appeals.

‘And whilst it sounds great for ratepayers to see 71% of checks have led to a reduction in rate bills, one wonders why this win figure is so high and what it says about the quality of the VOA assessments in the first place.’

However, a VOA spokesperson said:

Report by Pat Sweet