Business Rates and Investment – Treasury seek your views
19 January 2026

As part of the Government’s ongoing reform to the Business Rates system, the Treasury is seeking more information from businesses on the following topics:
 

  • The role of business rates in investment decisions -  specifically the Treasury is  seeking information about where the system has influenced business decisions or instances where investment has been delayed, reduced, or redirected
  • Reforms to incentives investment -  specially seeking views on the current tax structure (moving from ‘slab’ to ‘slice’); on the Small Business Rates Relief; the Improvement Relief and the Empty Property Relief
  • Receipt and Expenditure (R&E) process and methodology to assess valuations -  the government is seeking to address concerns about the impact R&E valuations can have on on investment plans ahead of the 2029 revaluation.
  • The pre-list discussion process and transparency – HMT wants these to work for both valuers and businesses and help ensure ratepayers understand how their valuation has been reached
     

For full details please read the consultation document that can be accessed via: Business_Rates_and_investment_Call_for_Evidence.pdf  

Note the consultation closes on 18 February 2026 at 2355 hours.


Should you wish to respond, HMT ask that you complete the survey via the following link:  https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/businessratesinvestmentcfe/   or email transformingbusinessrates@hmtreasury.gov.uk. 

Please also consider sharing your views with British Marine’s public affairs team to assist its wider lobbying work. If possible, please copy your response to our External Affairs Manager, Joanna Richardson email  jrichardson@britishmarine.co.uk  as receiving first-hand information from our members on how business rates, along with other business taxes and regulations, are impacting operations and growth plans is hugely helpful. 

Linked to this, and as reported early this month, the team recently campaigned successfully to ensure that marinas and other leisure marine businesses will be able to benefit from the new lower multipliers for Retail, Hospitality and Leisure (RHL) rate relief from 1 April 2026.  It is now pressing the government to increase the RHL discount because of the significant financial pressure many different types of RHL businesses face this year given the impact of the revaluation of non-domestic properties.