Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she made of the role of wholesalers in maintaining supply chain resilience when determining eligibility for business rates reliefs.

The Government currently provides a 40 per cent business rates relief for eligible retail, hospitality, and leisure (RHL) properties, up to a cash cap of £110,0000 per business, in 2025-26. Eligibility for the RHL relief scheme is outlined in guidance published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, and is focused on RHL properties that are wholly or mainly open to visiting members of the public. This is to ensure that support is targeted at in-person RHL, thereby helping to rebalance the burden between online and high-street retailers. There are no plans to expand the scope of this relief.

From 2026/27, the Government is introducing permanently lower business rates multipliers for RHL properties with rateable values (RVs) below £500,000. Details on which RHL properties will qualify for these lower multipliers can be found online here:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/business-rates-multipliers-qualifying-retail-hospitality-or-leisure.

To fund these lower RHL multipliers sustainably, from 2026/27, the Government is also introducing a higher multiplier on properties with RVs of £500,000 and above.