Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-04-23
Topic: Housing
Robert John Blackman (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon). I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association As I said last week, it is a pleasure to see the Chair of the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), back in his place for this debate. During his absence, the Committee has had to deal with many of the issues we are discussing tonight. I thank my hon. Friends on the Front Bench for coming before the Committee to update us on the Government’s proposals and to give us a chance to comment before the Bill came before the House In many ways, that is something from which all Departments could learn. Using Select Committees to do pre-legislative scrutiny is a good way of making sure we get legislation as close to correct as possible before it is presented to the House, rather than requiring the House to develop it further. My Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 went through the same process, so it is clear that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is leading the way in government, and we should congratulate it on doing so. However, I will outline some criticisms of the proposals, because there are some concerns The staircase tax came as a bolt out of the blue to some 30,000 small businesses in this country. We cannot criticise Supreme Court rulings, but this one was a massive shock to small businesses across the country that have paid their business rates for many years—there was a settled position. The Supreme Court ruling ended that, and I will pay particular attention to what has happened across the country in the past couple of years as a direct result My constituent Anthony Broza is the chief executive of Wienerworld, the UK’s leading independent music publisher and distributor. Given that his company is competing against Amazon and other such companies, the staircase tax has a direct impact on his business. He is my constituent—he lives in my constituency—but he runs his business out of an office just across the border in the London Borough of Brent, and therefore the levying authority is Brent Council Mr Broza owns an office block that I think is on four floors. He uses the ground floor for distribution and to allow the public to come to see his goods and services, and he uses the fourth floor for administration purposes. He quickly realised that he would not need the other floors so, rather than keeping them empty, he not unreasonably rented them out to other businesses. The floors are connected by a common staircase, hence the staircase tax Mr Broza runs a small business and, because he was getting small business rates relief, his rates were effectively zero. Suddenly, after returning from a good holiday, he received a 22-page document from the Valuation Office Agency and no less than nine rates bills from the London Borough of Brent demanding payment within five months. As might be imagined, it came as a bit of a shock to put it mildly. The sole reason for the shock is that the offices are split over different levels, and they have been that way for many years.