Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what recent estimate his Department has made of empty property rate avoidance in (a) the UK, (b) Lancashire and (c) Ribble Valley constituency.
The Government is committed to tackling avoidance in the wider tax system. Business rates avoidance by some is unfair on the vast majority of ratepayers who pay what they should. The Government will publish shortly a discussion paper on the nature and scale of business rates avoidance.
The Department has made no estimate of avoidance by those claiming empty property relief.