Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of exempting local community energy projects from business rates.

Most non-domestic properties are subject to business rates and set by the independent Valuation Office Agency. The 2016 Budget announced the biggest ever cut in business rates, worth over £6 billion across the next five years. From April 2017 we are permanently doubling the level of Small Business Rate Relief and increasing the thresholds so that 600,000 businesses will pay no business rates at all. We have also given local authorities wide-ranging, discretionary powers to grant business rates discounts. The Government has no plans to offer further relief in respect of community energy projects.