The situation for charities

• You can register your application for 80% Mandatory Rate Relief with your Local Authority.
• Annually (check your Local Authority's time-schedule) you can apply for up to an additional 20% Discretionary Rate Relief.
• You could then be receiving 100% Rate Relief.

Note: Other community sector and voluntary sector organisations can apply for up to 100% Discretionary Rate Relief. How is Rate Relief Financed

• Mandatory Rate Relief if financed from the National Business Rate Pool.
• For Charities, in receipt of Mandatory Rate Relief, any additional Discretionary Rate Relief is financed proportionally - 75% from the Domestic Rates Pool and 25% from the National Business Rate Pool.
• For charities in receipt of the full 100% relief made up of mandatory and discretionary, the actual financing by the Domestic Rate Pool would be 15%.

The Problems with Discretionary Rate Relief

• For you, the biggest problem is that you might not be granted the whole or even a part of the 20% Discretionary Rate. This is a year by year insecurity in terms of financial planning.
• The further problem for you is that if you have to pay the 20% Rate Bill, is this based on a revaluation of the premises as "Community user the "Commercial Market Valuation.That would mean your 20% bill would be much higher than it should be.

Advocacy - National and Local

• Central Government has continued to resist requests to enact 100% Mandatory Rate Relief for charities. Their basic argument - "Local Government should continue to have a responsibility in considering the level of Discretionary Rate Relief support it provides to charities. (Note: The Community Matters Conference AGM 2003 Resolved to seek 100% Mandatory Rate Relief for Community Associations.)
• Other National Charities are seeking to encourage the Government to reassess the Proportional Financing by reversing it to 75% from the National Business Rates Pool and 25% from the Local Domestic Rates Pool. This would mean that the actual financing costs to the Domestic Rate Pool would be 5% and not 15%. This might make a stronger case on Local Authorities to give the full Discretionary Relief and continue annually to do so.
• At local level your advocacy with Local Authorities should emphasise the fact that even under current regulations 85% support to charities rate relief is financed from the National Business Rate Pool and only 15% of a full 100% rate relief comes from the Local Domestic Rates Pool. You should further advocate the support of Discretionary Rate Relief in terms of the "Compact" and the principles of "Neighbourhood Renewal Partnership". You should also seek information on the valuation of the premises and ensure that valuation is based on the reality of charitable community use.

Important to the whole issue of the rates charges you are being assessed s the whole issue of the rateable value calculation being made regarding your premises. You can check this out for yourself by contacting the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). Click here to go to our links page fore more details.What is the National Picture on Discretionary Rates Relief? We want to draw the statistics together and need your help. Go to the Contact Us page and Email us your situation. (Hard copy contact also acceptable as not everyone has a computer or is linked to the Internet).Confidentiality All information you provide is protected and only the statistics from the research will be used.