Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Committee

Local Government Committee, 01 May 2001

01 May 2001 · S1 · Local Government Committee

Item of business

Non-domestic Rates

Bill Anderson (Forum of Private Business): Watch on SPTV

The committee has a copy of the nice colour photos. The report that you were given earlier contains the black-and-white copies of the photos. We want to consider the fact that no relief will be given to businesses with a rateable value of more than £8,000, and that for rateable values of more than £10,000 there will be a 2.75 per cent surcharge. Businesses with a rateable value of £10,000 or more will be classified as big business.Exhibit I contains photographs of the newspaper kiosk and coffee kiosk at Stirling bus station. The Wall's ice cream cabinet that can be seen in the top photograph does not belong to the newspaper kiosk, nor does the booth on the left, but the rateable value of that business is £10,000. That cannot rank as a typical example of a big business. Darcy's coffee bar, which is shown in the bottom photograph, also has a rateable value of £10,000.We looked at Inverness, our newest city. The bottom photograph is of a small jewellery shop there. I have marked the depth of the shop, including staff facilities. That is surely not a typical example of a big business, but its rateable value is £17,000.We decided to check rateable values in somewhere smaller than Inverness, so we went to Elgin, which has a population of 20,000. In the top photograph of exhibit III, you can see two plinths. Some properties beyond those plinths have rateable values of less than £10,000, but none on this side of them and right into the centre of the long High Street has a rateable value of less than £10,000. For example, the Ionic Bar, which can be seen in the lower photograph, has a rateable value of £12,750.Having mentioned licensed premises, I will discuss tourism businesses. Exhibit IV shows the Highlander Inn in Craigellachie. You will agree that as it has five bedrooms, it is not exactly what one would call a big hotel. Its rateable value is £10,400. In case you think that that is the exception, as Craigellachie is out in the country, we looked at the situation in Inverness. The smallest licensed hotel on the Highlands of Scotland Tourist Board accommodation list for Inverness, a 12-bedroom hotel, has a valuation of £47,500.Other business sectors will be affected. Gerry Dowds has mentioned businesses that require a large area, such as garage forecourts, which are valued on the basis of their turnover. We think that few of those businesses will qualify, particularly in towns.We have had many messages of support, for example, from the British Aggregates Association, the Scottish Pharmaceutical Federation, the Freight Transport Association, the Scottish Ship Chandlers Association and, this morning, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce. Bill Stitt, the deputy director of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, wrote:"We would be happy for the Forum of Private Business in Scotland to express the Scottish Chambers of Commerce's rejection of the scheme currently being proposed."Let us look at town-centre properties. Exhibit V shows Inverness. The bottom photograph is of Union Street, where not even the smallest shop qualifies. In Church Street, which is shown in the top photograph, only the shops at the end of the street qualify. There is the same tapering effect that we found in Elgin.The top picture in exhibit VI shows the High Street in Inverness leading into Eastgate. None of the businesses in the picture has a rateable value of less than £10,000. The result is that many businesses have fled off the main streets into side streets and, in Inverness, into the Victorian arcade, which can be seen in the lower photograph. Even there, half the properties are valued at more than £10,000.None of the properties in the centre of Elgin has a rateable value of less than £10,000. The smallest shop in the centre of Elgin, Sonya's Designer Clothing, which can be seen in the lower photograph of exhibit VII—members will admit that it is not a very big boutique—has a rateable value of £16,750.

Search Hansard contributions

Local Government Committee, 01 May 2001

In the same item of business