Get help paying your business rates

Small business rate relief is not applied automatically – you need to apply for it.

You can get small business rate relief if:

• your property’s rateable value is less than £15,000
• your business occupies one property – you may still be able to get relief if you occupy more than one property

Apply

Apply for small business rate relief

If you’ve applied for small business rate relief in the past, you don’t have to apply again.

However, you must contact us if the rateable value of the property has changed.

What you get

You will generally not pay business rates on a property with a rateable value of £12,000 or less.

For properties with a rateable value of £12,001 to £15,000, the rate of relief will go down gradually from 100% to 0%.

If you use more than one property

When you get a second property, you’ll keep getting any existing relief on your main property for 12 months.

You can still get small business rate relief on your main property after this if both the following apply:

1. none of your other properties have a rateable value above £2,899
2. the total rateable value of all your properties is less than £28,000

Charities and community amateur sports clubs can apply for rate relief of up to 80% where they occupy a property that is wholly or mainly used for charitable purposes.

If you think you’re eligible, email business.rates@hackney.gov.uk

We can also give charities and not for profit organisations discretionary rate relief of up to 100%, if you are a registered charity in receipt of the 80% mandatory charity relief or a not for profit organisation

The application process can take up to 4 months. Please note that applications are currently impacted by the cyberattack and are taking longer to process.

Check if you can apply: charity and not for profit – discretionary rate relief policy

The relief is awarded at our discretion. There is no right or entitlement to an award.

Applications have to be made every year and must be made online.

You can save your progress and continue whenever you want. For more information, see our charity and not for profit – guidance for applicants.

2020/21 applications

Apply now Continue your application

2021/22 applications

Apply now Continue your application

Once you have applied, you will get an email with a tracking reference. If you haven’t included all the information, the application might take longer.

A panel that meets in March, June, September and December decides who will get discretionary rate relief. Please note this is currently impacted by the cyberattack.

We are currently reviewing the discretionary rate relief process for charity and not-for-profit organisations from 2022/23. Any changes or updates will be posted here. Any questions regarding this can be sent to communitypartnerships@hackney.gov.uk.

To be eligible for hardship relief, you need to satisfy us that both:

• you would be in financial hardship without it
• giving hardship relief to you is in the interests of people of Hackney

Email business.rates@hackney.gov.uk and explain your situation if you think you might be eligible.

We automatically apply local discretionary business rate relief to your bill.

It started being available on 1 April 2017 and may go on until 31 March 2021. Certain businesses, such as betting shops, or businesses that are in arrears, are not eligible.

The amount of money we have available for local discretionary business rate relief is £2 million for 2018/19. For 19/20 it reduces to £829,000.

You may be eligible if your business:

• has a 2019/20 rateable value of £265,000 or less
• has had a 2019/20 business rates bill increase of 12.5% or more, after exemptions and other reliefs (except pub relief)
• is a small or medium sized firm according to government guidance

Email business.rates@hackney.gov.uk if you think your business might be eligible and you don’t see local discretionary business rate relief on your bill.

See Budget 2020 – what does it mean for your business rates bill?

In the Autumn budget 2018, the Government announced a one-third discount for eligible retail businesses with a rateable value of less than £51,000, up to state aid limits.

If an eligible business already receives state aid a declaration from the business will be required.

The scheme will run for 2 years from 1 April 2019. This discount will be applied to bills after the application of any reliefs, excluding any local discounts.

We intend to apply the relief automatically where we can.

See Budget 2020 – what does it mean for your business rates bill?

Apply

If you believe that you should qualify for retail relief but haven’t had it awarded, complete the application form:

Retail discount application

We automatically apply supporting small business rate relief on your bill. This relief helps people who lost some or all of their small business relief on 1 April 2017.

Supporting small business relief means your business rates will go up by no more than the larger of these two:

• a cash value of £600 per year (£50 per month)
• the matching cap on increases for small properties in the transitional relief scheme

If your property has a rateable value up to £50,999, your bill will be automatically calculated using the small business relief reduced multiplier, which is lower than the standard one.

From 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019, the small business multiplier is 48p and the standard multiplier is 49.3p.

From 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020 the small business multiplier is 49.1p and the standard multiplier 50.4p.

From 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 the small business multiplier is  49.9p and the standard multiplier 51.2p.

Certain properties are exempt from business rates. You may not have to pay business rates on the following types of property:

• agricultural land and buildings, including fish farms
• buildings used for the training or welfare of disabled people
• buildings registered for public religious worship or church halls
• drainage authority property
• public parks

There are strict legal requirements for these exemptions.

If you think your property should be exempt from business rates, report this to the Valuation Office Agency.

Contact us as soon as a building becomes empty. Empty buildings get 3 months’ business rates relief.

This can sometimes be extended to 6 months (mainly for industrial and warehouse properties).

After this period an empty property is liable for 100% of the basic occupied business rate unless:

• the rateable value of the property is less than £2,600 from 1 April 2011 to 31 March 2017 and less than £2,899 in 2017/18
• the unoccupied property rate has been reduced by the Government by order, in which case it will be shown on the front of your bill

In addition some empty properties do not have to pay business rates, which include in most cases those owned by charities and community sports clubs.

There are also a number of other exemptions from the empty property rate such as listed buildings . Please contact us for full details of other exemptions and whether they apply.

Tell us about an empty property

• complete the empty property questionnaire

Please submit your form to business.rates@hackney.gov.uk.

You will also need to email a copy of your lease to business.rates@hackney.gov.uk. It doesn’t have to be the whole document but must include:

• the term of the lease showing the parties involved, the property address and the period
• the signature page of the lease which is normally found at the back

Please note that we may check that the buildings are not being used without contacting you.

If you miss one payment, we’ll send you a reminder. If you don’t pay this within 7 days, you’ll receive a final reminder and have to pay all the business rates you owe for the year at once.

If you pay the amount you missed but miss payments again we will send you a second and final reminder. You’ll have to pay the full amount that you owe for the year within 7 days.

If you can’t pay the full balance, contact us immediately to see if we can help you.

We don’t promise to be able to help everyone but the sooner you contact us, the better our chances of being able to help.

Email business.rates@hackney.gov.uk, or call us at: 020 8356 3466.

If you don’t pay the full balance, we will start legal proceedings and apply to the magistrate’s court for a liability order against you.

The summons costs are £92.00. If the court grants the liability order, you will have to pay £8.50 on top of the £92.00.

There may also be fees for enforcement agents, which can be substantial.

The liability order allows us to:

1. employ enforcement agents to seize goods to pay for your debt
2. start insolvency proceedings against you
3. make an application for your committal to prison for a maximum of 3 months (if the enforcement agent is unable to recover the debt)

If you pay what you owe, including the enforcement agent’s fees, we will stop all action and costs from the date we receive your payment.