Birmingham, Cornwall, North Yorkshire Small Businesses Are the Biggest Winners in 2026 Autumn Budget Changes

From 1 April 2027, the Budget's new 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. thresholds mean that a shop, café, pub or salon with a 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. of up to £18,000 pays no business rates at all, if it is its owner's only property. Until now, full relief stopped at £12,000. We have mapped every 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. property in England between the old and new limits to see where the change lands.

Birmingham comes out on top by a distance: 2,417 properties that stop paying, worth £10.3 million a year to their occupiers. Cornwall and North Yorkshire come next, with just over 1,200 each and about £5.3 million and £5.2 million a year respectively.

The top ten

A typical business in these areas saves between about £4,200 and £4,600 a year. The medians bunch at £4,773 and £5,925 because the Valuation Office sets values in round steps: those are the savings at rateable values of £14,500 and £15,000.

But outer London gains the largest share

Birmingham, Cornwall and North Yorkshire top the list partly because they are large councils with a great many small businesses. Measured as a share of each council's retail, hospitality and leisure properties, the picture changes completely: all ten of the highest are outer London boroughs, where more than a quarter of these properties stop paying.

Why it falls this way

What decides the outcome is how many small premises have a rateable value between £12,000 and £18,000, and that comes down to local rents.

• Cornwall and North Yorkshire: most small businesses already pay nothing. 84% of Cornwall's retail, hospitality and leisure properties, and 78% of North Yorkshire's, are valued at £12,000 or less. The change helps a smaller share, but these councils are so large that the number is still among the highest in England.
• Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol: a big stock of small shops, with 13% to 18% of them in the new band.
• Outer London: rents put a typical small shop just above the old £12,000 limit but below the new £18,000 one, so between 26% and 31% of properties fall in the band. In central London most small shops are worth more than £18,000 and see no change.

What kind of businesses benefit

Shops make up about 85% of the properties that stop paying across these ten councils. The rest tell a local story: pubs, cafés and guest houses in North Yorkshire, holiday lets and cafés in Cornwall, restaurants in Birmingham and showrooms in Manchester.

What these figures do and don't show

• They are an upper estimate. The relief only goes to a business with one property, or a small second one, and the Valuation Office's data cannot tell us who occupies what. The government expects about 70,000 businesses to stop paying across England; our count of eligible properties is 93,887, so the real figures are likely to be around a quarter lower.
• Vape shops lose Small Business Rate Relief altogether from April 2027, but cannot be picked out in the data, so they remain in our counts.
• Holiday lets only count as business property if they are let for enough nights a year, so not all of Cornwall's will qualify.
• Savings are before transitional relief, and apply to England only.

What it means for you

Small Business Rate Relief usually has to be claimed from your council, so a business that becomes eligible in April may need to apply. And because the threshold is a line in the sand, your rateable value matters more than ever: a property valued at £18,500 pays part of the bill; one valued at £18,000 pays nothing. Check how your rateable value compares with similar properties nearby. For what the new thresholds save at each rateable value, read what the new £18,000 threshold saves shops, pubs and cafés.