Like an old friend, you thought you knew what to expect but there’s always a surprise or two!

In April 2010, England and Wales will have their next rating Revaluation. It’s just two words but their effect is going to be enormous. As before, you need to plan well in advance and BMH is here to help you.

The 2010 Revaluation requires a rental valuation of all commercial properties as at 1 April 2008. However, as we all know the commercial property markets have cooled in 2007 & 2008 and we’re on the downward part of the property cycle. As a consequence, the Valuation Office Agency is struggling to get the rental evidence to value your premises.

Secondly, the Chancellor has also devised a new stealth tax (Empty Property Rates) for landlords and owners of all empty commercial property. (See our dedicated article on this in the newsletter).

So if a Revaluation was not complicated enough, the EPR tax commences on… you guessed it, 1 April 2008 too!

Finally, (yes, there is a “finally”!) just to up the anti, the VOA has also decided to change the way it also measures your building! This means that all the survey data has to be recalculated by the VO, accurately and on time, for this new rating list as well. So putting it all together, this looks like a tall order!

We believe there are potential problems ahead, so our advice to clients is to re-engage BMH now. It may seem early but the sooner we are working for you, the more prepared you’ll be to ride out the storms ahead. We will be writing to you to confirm our terms of engagement for 2010 as soon as practical.

The timetable for the 2010 Revaluation is shown below:

1 April 2008: Valuation Date

1 January 2010: Publication of the Draft Rating List

1 April 2010: Rating List becomes live.