Barriers to Business in Tonbridge. Part Two....

I said in the last posting that I wouldn't get started on the subject of business rates which is code in the blogging world for: That subject will probably be appearing on this blog very soon! So here goes. Probably the most often sighted reason for businesses failing is that of crippling business rates. I said in the last article that I'd speak from recent personal experience having moved my bookshop very recently to its new location. Let me tell you that experience has been a very steep learning curve for me indeed. When I was weighing up whether or not to take the plunge in moving from just off the High Street (Bank St.) to the more prominent position I'm in now, after rent, the most important consideration is that of business rates. In Bank Street I was enjoying 50% small business rate relief (SBR as the council calls it) and this rose to 100% relief due to a temporary government scheme which I still haven't fathomed although, obviously, I wasn't complaining.  I understand that this scheme finishes in 2013. When I enquired with Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council (TMBC as the council likes to call itself) a person, who I could name but that would be cruel, told me very adamantly that, in my new location, I would still get the 100% SBR that I been getting before. That is to say that I would pay a big fat zero business rates. I thought this was too good to be true so asked him to check it over not once but twice which he said he'd done. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have gone ahead anyway with the shop move but clearly it was a crucial part of my thinking when doing my business plans. So imagine my horror when, about a month in my new premises, I receive a Non Domestic Rates (Business rates to you and I) bill for nearly £2,500 for the year! "Bit of a difference between zero and £2,500" is what I screeched down the phone at another assistant in the council's rates department. She was pretty matter of fact about the whole thing, which only served to rile me even more, and just passed it off as a mistake by one of her colleagues who, in any case had now left the organisation. (Turns out even that wasn't quite correct.) All she was interested in was getting my bank details so that she could process my bill and get another moaning idiot off the phone (or at least that's how it felt.) I enquired later as to whether I could take this provision of mis-information up with anyone more senior to which she replied that there was no one around until the following week and, in any case, it wouldn't make any difference. She was probably right on that score but, not being one to be put off, I got the names and email addresses of al the senior people in that department and wrote to them to vent my spleen. Oh yes and I copied in the Chief Executive of TMBC also (that usually makes the pen pushers sit up and take notice!) In my later exchanges with another seniorish person, who seems to have been allocated this annoying idiot (me) I got other things off my chest like why do charity shops get 80% SBR when retailers like myself only get about 30%? Don't they want to encourage community shops as well? Surely, I told them,  TMBC must have some influence over the government directed policy of business rates and some disgression as regards the level of rate relief given. In the USA and other countries business rates, so I understand, are linked to the turnover of a business so that, as a business grows, the business rates would increase, therefore helping a business past the early stages and not, effectively, discouraging them from even giving it a go. This system to me seems like an infintely more acceptable method of charging for business rates instead of just a blanket charge for all. Unless of course Mary Portas is right. That councils are quite happy to let the High Street become waste lands, gettos of derelict buildings, boarded up shops and row upon row of charity shops each rubbing their hands after receiving their 80% rate relief....