A relief is a discount your council takes off your business rates bill. Transitional reliefA cap that phases in large bill increases (or decreases) gradually after a revaluation, so no ratepayer's bill jumps by the full amount in one go., supporting small business relief and the lower retail, hospitality and leisureLower rates in the pound for qualifying shops, pubs, restaurants, cafés, gyms, hotels and similar. Since 1 April 2026 this is a lower multiplier rather than a relief — there is no claim form, and your council decides who qualifies from its record of how the property is used. multiplierThe pence-in-the-pound rate the government sets each year. Your rates bill is roughly Rateable Value × multiplier, before any reliefs are applied.s are applied by your council without a claim; almost every other relief has to be asked for. That is why an eligible business can sit on a full bill for years without anything looking wrong. Reliefs are a conversation with your council, not with the Valuation OfficeThe government body that sets every property's Rateable Value. From April 2026 the VOA is part of HMRC (see below), but 'VOA' is still the common name for the valuation side of the work., and there is no Check or Challenge for them.
A relief is a discount your council takes off your business rates bill after the main sum has been done. Some are worth a few per cent. Small Business Rate ReliefA discount for smaller properties. Below a certain Rateable Value you pay nothing at all; above that there's a sliding-scale ('tapered') discount up to a higher threshold. can take the bill to nothing at all. And a good share of what people call an overpayment turns out to be a relief that was never applied — which is a phone call to the council, not a formal challenge to anybody.
Where reliefs sit in the sum
The same sum for every property in England. Nobody asks you anything, and there is nothing here that depends on who you are.
Your council can only subtract the reliefs it knows you qualify for. Almost everything that decides that — how many properties you occupy, what you use this one for, whether you are a charity, when you moved in — is a fact about your business that nobody has told it.
Two organisations set the top half of that picture. The Valuation Office — part of HMRC since April 2026 — sets your rateable valueThe official estimate of a property's annual rental value on a fixed valuation date. Your rates bill is based on this figure, not on what you actually pay in rent., and central government sets the multiplier. Neither of them knows anything about your business, and neither needs to: the same arithmetic runs on every property in England.
The bottom half is a different kind of thing altogether. Reliefs are applied by your council, and most of them turn on facts about you rather than about the building — how many properties you occupy, what you actually do inside this one, whether you are a charity, the day you moved in. Your council holds a list of properties. It does not hold a list of businesses.
Automatic, or only if you ask?
Three things on the list below arrive without anyone doing anything. Everything else sits there until somebody claims it.
| Relief | Who grants it | Do you have to ask? |
|---|---|---|
| Small Business Rate Relief | Your council | Yes |
| Retail, hospitality and leisure multipliers | Your council, from its own records | No — but check |
| Pubs and live music venues relief | Your council | Yes |
| Charitable and sports club relief | Your council | Yes |
| Rural rate relief | Your council | Yes |
| Empty property relief | Your council | Yes |
| Transitional relief | Your council | No — automatic |
| Supporting small business relief | Your council | No — automatic |
| Hardship relief | Your council | Yes, and it may say no |
Small Business Rate Relief — the one that matters most
If your rateable value is under £15,000 and this is the only property your business uses in England, this is the relief to check first. At £12,000 or less it removes the bill entirely. Between £12,001 and £15,000 it tapers away on a straight line.
The one-property rule, and its exceptions
The relief is built around a single condition: you occupy only one property. There are two ways to keep it if you do not.
- Small extra properties are ignored. You keep the relief on your main property if none of your others has a rateable value above £2,899, and the total across all of them is under £20,000 — £28,000 in London.
- Taking a second property gives you a grace period. You keep the relief on your main property for 12 months if you took the second one before 27 November 2025, and for 36 months if you took it on or after that date.
- Nobody applies either rule for you. Your council can see the properties in its own area. It cannot see the unit you rent two boroughs away, and it will not guess.
Where the real cliff edges are
The taper itself is a slope, not a step. Relief runs down evenly and reaches zero exactly at £15,000, so crossing that particular line costs pennies. What the taper does do is make £3,000 of rateable value the difference between a bill of nothing and a bill of about £6,480 a year — steep enough without being a cliff.
Shops, cafés, pubs, gyms and hotels
This changed on 1 April 2026, and a lot of advice still online has not caught up. Retail, hospitality and leisure relief — the 40% discount with a £110,000 cap — has ended. You cannot make a new claim for it. In its place, qualifying properties now get permanently lower multipliers: 38.2p in the pound below a rateable value of £51,000 and 43.0p from £51,000, each 5p below the ordinary rate. Properties at £500,000 or more are excluded.
To qualify, the property has to be wholly or mainly used for a retail, hospitality or leisure purpose and be available to visiting members of the public in person. Financial services, medical and professional services, betting shops, car parks, transport hubs and warehouses serving online sales are specifically excluded.
Pubs and live music venues relief — new for 2026/27
A new discount of 15% off the bill runs for the 2026/27 billing year, on top of the lower multipliers. It is not automatic — you have to contact your council. Bills for qualifying properties are also protected from rising by more than inflation between April 2027 and March 2029.
- A qualifying pub must be open to the general public, allow free entry other than for occasional entertainment, allow drinking without requiring food, and let drinks be bought at a bar. All four.
- A live music venue is a property mainly used for the performance of live music to an audience.
- A property mainly used as a nightclub or a theatre does not qualify.
Charities, village shops and empty units
Charitable and sports club relief
A registered charity gets 80% off where the property is wholly or mainly used for charitable purposes; a registered community amateur sports club gets the same where the property is used for the purposes of the club. That 80% is mandatory — your council has to give it, and the remaining 20% is discretionary but many councils will consider it. You cannot have charitable rate reliefAn 80%+ discount available to registered charities and some community amateur sports clubs using a property mainly for charitable purposes. and Small Business Rate Relief on the same property, and it is your council that decides which one applies — worth raising if your rateable value is low enough that Small Business Rate Relief would take the bill to nothing at all, because 100% beats 80%.
Rural rate relief
If you are the only general store, food shop or post office in a settlement of fewer than 3,000 people, you get 100% relief where the rateable value is up to £8,500. The only pub or petrol station gets it up to £12,500. Your council holds the rural settlement list that decides whether your village counts, so that is the conversation to have.
Empty property relief
When a property becomes genuinely unoccupied you get a rate-free period, then full rates resume. You have to tell your council it is empty — nothing happens on its own.
- Three months rate-free for most property; six months for qualifying industrial premises.
- Some property stays exempt until it is reoccupied — a rateable value below £2,900, listed buildings, scheduled ancient monuments, and cases of insolvency or where occupation is prohibited by law.
- A charity's empty property is zero-rated if its next use will be mostly charitable.
- The reset is 13 weeks. You have to occupy the property continuously for 13 weeks before a further rate-free period can start — so a token fortnight's occupation between tenants does not buy another three months.
The two cushions after the 2026 revaluation
Every rateable value in England changed on 1 April 2026. Two schemes exist to stop the resulting bills landing all at once, and both are applied by your council without you asking. They are worth understanding anyway, because they are the reason a bill can look wrong when it is right.
Transitional relief caps how far your bill can rise in a single year. For 2026/27 the caps are:
| Rateable value | Most your bill can rise in 2026/27 |
|---|---|
| Up to £20,000 (£28,000 in London) | 5% |
| £20,001 (£28,001 in London) to £100,000 | 15% |
| Over £100,000 | 30% |
The caps change in the two following years, and every later figure carries “plus inflation” on top: 10%, 25% and 25% in 2027/28, then 25%, 40% and 25% in 2028/29. Note that the largest properties are not treated more generously over time — their cap tightens from 30% to 25% and stays there. A large increase is phased in, not avoided.
Supporting small business relief catches the other case: businesses that lost some or all of their Small Business Rate Relief, rural relief, the old retail, hospitality and leisure relief, or the 2023 version of this same scheme because of the revaluation. It limits the increase to £800 for the year, or the transitional relief cap, whichever is greater. Charities and sports clubs already getting the mandatory 80% are excluded.
The rest, in one line each
Improvement relief
Twelve months' relief on the increase caused by qualifying building works, if the same ratepayer stayed in occupation throughout. Works have to be completed by 31 March 2028, and the relief runs no later than 31 March 2029.
Heat network relief
100% where the property is mainly a low-carbon heat network supplying heating or cooling to other buildings.
Freeport and Investment Zone relief
100% for five years if you move into a designated tax site. If you are already there and expand in place, the discount is smaller — your council works it out from the change in the property's value.
Film studio relief
40% off gross bills for qualifying studios, running to 2034.
Electric vehicle charging points
100% for eligible dedicated charging points and EV-only forecourts, announced to run to 2036.
Hardship relief
Wholly discretionary. Your council must be satisfied you would be in financial difficulty without it and that granting it serves local people.
Part-occupied property
Where part of the property is empty for a short period, your council can ask the Valuation Office to split the valuation. Discretionary, and it lapses every 31 March.
Exemptions
Agricultural land and buildings, places of public religious worship and church halls, and buildings for the training or welfare of disabled people are outside rating altogether rather than discounted. Start with your council; if the property should not be in the rating list at all, that part is a Valuation Office question.
Why an eligible business ends up without the relief
None of the following is anybody behaving badly. They are the ordinary ways a rules-based system with incomplete information gets the answer wrong, and each one has a specific fix.
It was never automatic
Transitional relief, supporting small business relief and the retail, hospitality and leisure multipliers are applied on the council's own initiative. Almost everything else starts when somebody claims it, and nothing on your bill announces that a relief is missing.
Ask your council for a list of every relief on the account, and the dates each one ran from and to.
Your council cannot see your other properties
Small Business Rate Relief turns entirely on whether you occupy only one property in England. A council can see its own area. It cannot see a unit you occupy in another borough, and it will not assume you have none.
Tell them in writing how many properties you occupy in England, with the rateable value of each.
A new occupier starts from zero
Reliefs attach to the ratepayer, not to the building. When the business at an address changes, entitlement is worked out again from scratch, and whatever the previous tenant had does not carry across.
If you moved in and nobody asked you anything, that is the gap. Claim from your first day of occupation.
The revaluation moved every number
A property valued at £14,500 on the old list, on tapered relief, may be £15,500 on the new one and entitled to nothing. Councils re-run entitlement at a revaluation and drop the businesses that no longer qualify.
Check whether supporting small business relief should be cushioning the increase — it caps the rise at £800 for the year.
Your property is recorded as the wrong kind of thing
The retail, hospitality and leisure multipliers are worth 5p in the pound and your council decides who gets them from its own record of how the property is used. There is no application, so there is nothing to have been refused — the discount simply never appears.
Ask which multiplier is being applied to your bill, and on what basis. If the recorded use is wrong, correct it.
The post went somewhere else
Bills and declaration forms go to the address on the account, which may be an agent, a managing agent, a registered office or a previous occupier. A form nobody sees is a relief nobody claims.
Check the correspondence address your council holds, and ask whether any declaration is outstanding.
A subsidy declaration was never returned
Some schemes require you to confirm you are within the minimal financial assistance limit of £315,000 over three years. Councils may withhold relief until that comes back, and it is easy to mistake the form for junk.
Return it. The overwhelming majority of small businesses are nowhere near the limit.
What to do if you think you are missing one
Find your billing authority
Reliefs are administered entirely by your council. Entering your postcode at gov.uk/find-local-council gives you the right one. The Valuation Office cannot help with any of this.
Ask what is already on the account
Request a list of every relief applied to the property, with the period each one covered. You cannot spot a gap without knowing what is there, and this single question resolves a fair number of cases on its own.
Tell them what they do not know
How many properties you occupy in England and the rateable value of each; what the property is actually used for; whether you are a charity or a registered sports club; the date you took occupation. These are the facts that decide most reliefs and none of them is visible from a rating list.
Ask for it to be backdated
State the first day the conditions were met, not the day you noticed — a relief awarded from today quietly writes off everything before it. For the mandatory reliefs there is no statutory cut-off, and councils in practice apply a six-year limit. The discretionary ones are stricter: pubs and live music venues relief, the charity top-up and hardship relief carry much shorter deadlines, so claim those within the year they relate to.
If they say no
There is no Valuation Tribunal route for a relief decision, unlike a rateable value. Start with the council's own complaints procedure, then the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. But a refused mandatory relief — small business, charitable, rural, empty property — is an argument about how much you are liable to pay rather than a favour withheld, so take advice before you accept the answer. This is a weaker route than the one that exists for rateable values, which is exactly why it is worth getting the facts in front of them properly the first time.
A relief is not a Challenge
These two get confused constantly, and the confusion is expensive because each route goes to a different organisation with different deadlines. Check, Challenge, AppealThe three-stage official process for disputing your Rateable Value: 'Check' the facts held about your property, 'Challenge' the valuation with evidence, then 'Appeal' to an independent tribunal if it's still unresolved. is the official process for disputing a rateable value. It has nothing to do with reliefs.
| What you think is wrong | Who decides it | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| My rateable value is too high | Valuation Office | Check, then Challenge |
| The floor area or recorded details are wrong | Valuation Office | Check |
| I am not getting a relief I am entitled to | Your council | Contact the council |
| I should be on the retail, hospitality and leisure multiplier | Your council | Contact the council |
| My property should be exempt altogether | Council, then Valuation Office | Start with the council |
Read next
Sources
- GOV.UK — Business rates relief: overview
- GOV.UK — Small business rate relief
- GOV.UK — Retail, hospitality and leisure relief (closed to new claims)
- GOV.UK — Business rates multipliers: qualifying retail, hospitality or leisure
- GOV.UK — Pubs and live music venues relief
- GOV.UK — Charitable rate relief
- GOV.UK — Rural rate relief
- GOV.UK — Empty property relief
- GOV.UK — Exempted buildings
- GOV.UK — Improvement relief
- GOV.UK — Freeports relief
- GOV.UK — Business rates information letter 2/2024 (the 13-week empty property reset)
- Non-Domestic Rating (Unoccupied Property) (England) Regulations 2008
- GOV.UK — Transitional relief
- GOV.UK — Supporting small business relief
- GOV.UK — Find your local council
- GOV.UK — Notification of non-domestic rating multipliers for 2026/27
General information, not financial or legal advice. Independent service — not endorsed by the VOA or HMRC. Official rateable values and formal decisions come only from the VOA/HMRC. England only.