My speech from the Conservative Party Conference 2022

What follows is a copy of the speech I gave at the Conservative Party Conference on Tuesday 4 October, where I spoke at a Centre for Policy Studies panel about what needs to happen to enable physical retail to contribute to economic growth. A version of this speech also appeared in CoStar News (a link to the article is below).

I am here as Chair of the Shopkeepers Campaign. Our aim is to make it possible for England’s high streets, towns and cities to become thriving commercial hubs. Fixing business rates is key to that.

I am going to make three quick points:

1. Business rates are too high
2. There are too many reliefs which make the system unfair
3. And the Conservative Party has promised in their 2019 manifesto to fix this. A promise which must be delivered.

 Why are business rates too high?

When Margaret Thatcher’s government brought in the uniform business rate in 1990, it was set at 34p in the pound. Today it is at 51p in the pound.

This makes occupying commercial premises less attractive and so deters investment. The result is boarded up shops.

You see it across the country, and its because high business rates make occupying commercial premises too expensive in town centres.

Some tenants are now getting zero or near zero rent deals from property owners, and yet still they struggle to stay in business.

Before Covid we saw household names like Jessops, Clintons Cards, Mothercare and Poundworld all going into administration. High business rates were a critical factor.

Then there are all the reliefs, which actually make the system unfair.

Different shops on the same street pay different levels of rates, according to the size and type of business owner and where they are located.

During the pandemic, a Covid relief fund was created that was given to local authorities to administer and largely did not get spent on time. And then we were told that shops would get 50% discount on business rates but that this would only apply to the first £110,000 of a company’s bills. This failure to compensate retail chains has contributed to many of them going into administration.

The biggest scandal, though, is transitional relief. This is the system which makes shops whose rental valuations have fallen pay higher bills, in order to subsidise those whose valuations have risen. It means that occupiers in more economically depressed areas pay more.

Treasury and DLUHC Ministers are about to sign off on the transitional relief scheme for 2023. If they want levelling up to work at all, they have to put a stop to downwards transition.

We were promised cuts to business rates, explicitly in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, yet is has not happened.

I understand why the Treasury likes the £26 billion that gets paid each year in business rates but the Conservative Party saw what high rates were doing to our high streets.

So when Liz Truss stood on the steps of Downing Street saying she would deliver the promises the Party had made in 2019, it gave me cause to hope.

Now we need to see the cuts to business rates announced.

Concluding remarks

So:

• business rates need to be cut to regenerate our towns and cities
• transitional relief needs to be scrapped to bring about fairness and levelling up
• and the Conservative Party needs to keep its promises to get itself re-elected.

https://www.costar.com/article/1369160457/tory-party-conference-new-government-needs-to-step-up-on-business-rates