30-07-2025
- Business
- Belfast Telegraph
Council calls on Minister to allow it to vary business rates in bid to tackle high street vacancies
Elected representatives at Ards and North Down Borough Council want to differentiate rates increases between small and medium businesses and larger ones.
They have made a call to the Finance Minister John O'Dowd for new powers for councils to separate non-domestic rates between big and smaller businesses, in a bid to liven up town centres and fight vacancies.
At the most recent full meeting of the council at Bangor Castle, UUP councillor Philip Smith proposed that 'to grow our non-domestic rates base, the council writes to the Minister for Finance to request that he amends the Administrative and Financial Provisions Bill to provide local councils with the powers to vary the level of rates increases between SME's (small and medium enterprises) and larger businesses'.
News Catch Up - Wednesday 30th July
Rates are a property tax used to fund services at both local or 'district' level through councils and the 'regional' level through the NI Assembly.
They are collected from residential property owners through domestic rates and business owners through non-domestic rates. Business rates are a rate for all non domestic properties, such as offices, factories and shops, with bills based on the rateable value of that property.
Mr Smith said: 'The debate around the vacancy rates obviously highlighted the issues we have, particularly around certain areas like Bangor. I strongly believe a measure like this would help our performance. We obviously have a corporate goal to attract more businesses to the borough and grow our non-domestic rate base, and we are currently reviewing how we might best do this.
'One lever we have discussed is the possible use of the non-domestic rate, and the decoupling powers that the previous Finance Minister provided to bear the domestic and non-domestic rates increases. One of the issues we have all identified is the danger this would benefit large companies the best – the likes of Tesco, Mark and Spencer and Sainsburys would incur more than smaller businesses.
'Councils in Northern Ireland do not have the power to vary the rates of increase between different types of businesses. If we did, it would obviously give us the flexibility to make a decision on this.'
He added: 'The principle for targeting rates at small businesses is well established across the whole of the UK, the only anomaly is that Northern Ireland councils don't have the power or the flexibility to vary our rates policy accordingly. That's why I want to raise it with the Finance Minister and ask him to give councils this power to differentiate between rate increases between SME's and larger businesses.
'He is currently bringing a bill through the Assembly at the moment, called the Administrative and Financial Provisions Bill, which is covering a whole plethora of different issues within government in Northern Ireland.'
He added: 'This is not a new concept, but what is new would be allowing councils in Northern Ireland to vary their rates and deploy this policy if they chose to do so.'
The chamber supported the proposal.
A study commissioned by the council, and delivered by Queen's University and McGarry Consultants from analysis earlier this year, showed Bangor has an overall vacancy rate of 20%, while Newtownards has an overall vacancy rate of 21.3%.
In Bangor, 11 of the 12 vacant properties on Queen's Parade are due to be developed as part of the Queen's Parade development – leaving these out of the figures would reduce vacancy in Bangor to 16.5%.
The greatest concentrations of vacancy in Newtownards are at Movilla Street, Greenwell Street, and Castle Street, with respective vacancy rates of 42.9%, 42.9% and 40%.
The study report is part of preparation by the council for its 'Empty to Energised' scheme, which will see a pilot launched as a first point to developing interventions to tackle the issue of vacancy and dereliction in the borough.
