mybusinessrates.gov.uk/wales the official government website

Reliefs

There are a number of rate reliefs businesses can apply for in order to ease the impact of their business rates bill.  This section outlines the criteria required to qualify for each type of rate relief and gives a general indication of the effect this might have on your bill.

Please note you should contact your local authority to apply for any type of relief and for further information.

The following types of rate relief are available:

Property empty and unused

Charities and charity shops

Not a charity, but another type of non-profit-making organisation

Community amateur sports clubs

Rural settlement - This relief is no longer available

Part of your property is not not being used and is completely unoccupied for a short time

You are suffering severe hardship and cannot pay your bill

Property empty and unused
You pay no business rates for the first three months that the property is empty.  After that, the full liability is payable.

On industrial buildings, the full liability is payable after the property has been empty for six months.

Empty properties owned by charities or empty community amateur sports clubs are completely exempt from business rates.

Empty property relief is available to the owner - in this case the owner is the person entitled to possession of the property in question.

Charities and charity shops
If the property is used wholly or mainly for charitable purposes, or the institution or organisation occupying it is established for charitable purposes only, or is occupied by people administering a trust established for charitable purposes only, you are automatically entitled to an 80% reduction on your bill. You need to apply to your local authority, however, to make sure you receive it. In the case of charity shops, the property must be wholly or mainly used for the sale of goods donated to a charity and the proceeds of sale of the goods must (after deduction of expenses) be applied for the purposes of a charity.

Your local authority may also decide to further reduce the amount you have to pay - or even remit the full amount . Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

Not a charity, but another type of non-profit-making organisation
Although you have no automatic entitlement, local authorities may decide to give you relief or cancel your bill altogether. Your organisation must be non-profit-making and the property it occupies must be used for charitable, philanthropic or religious purposes or concerned with education, social welfare, science, literature or the fine arts. Or the property must be used by a non-profit-making organisation wholly or mainly for the purpose of recreation.

Community amateur sports clubs

If you are registerered as a community amateur sports club you are automatically entitled to an 80% reduction on your bill. You need to apply to your local authority, however, to make sure you receive it. Your local authority may also decide to further reduce the amount you have to pay - or even remit the full amount . Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

Rural settlement
This relief is no longer available

Part of your property is not being used and is completely unoccupied for a short time
Your local authority may consider giving you relief, if they decide you are entitled to it, and reduce your payment on the part of your property that is clearly unoccupied and beyond use for a short period of time.  Your local authority can choose to ask the VOA to divide the current rateable value between the parts of the property that are occupied and those which are not occupied.  If your application for this rate relief is succesful, you will pay full rates on the occupied part of the property and 50% in respect of the unoccupied part.

You are suffering severe hardship and cannot pay your bill
Your local authority may give you up to 100% relief - the decision is up to them. It would normally only do this in extreme cases of hardship and for businesses that are particularly important to the local community. It would need to be satisfied that you would suffer hardship if the relief was not granted and takes account of the fact that local council tax payers will be paying part of the cost of the relief.