Business rates retention

In October 2015 the Government announced its intention to enable local government as a sector to retain all business rates raised locally. The Government also committed itself to a full review of the needs and redistribution mechanism for local authority funding through the Fair Funding Review. The LGA has been collaborating with local authorities and central government to take these proposals forward.


Our work

Since the initial announcement by the Government, the LGA has been working closely with local authorities and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) on the details of the reforms.

A Local Government Finance Bill was introduced in Parliament in January 2017 to provide enabling legislation for the reforms and the LGA provided briefing and information to MPs throughout the Bill process. The Bill did not complete its legislative stages before the 2017 general election and was subsequently not reintroduced. DCLG are considering ways in which the Government's manifesto commitment to give local government greater control over their income can be taken forward.

In March 2016 a steering group and working groups were established to consider initial proposals. The groups met regularly throughout 2016/17 and meeting papers are available below. There are also links to the LGA's responses to the Government's consultations on business rates retention and call for evidence.


Get involved

To ensure that views from across the sector are represented in the development of a new system, we are inviting you to submit your views on all papers of all groups set up to help implement business rate retention as listed below. To feed in to the work on a new system for 100 per cent business rate retention, please email [email protected]