business-rates

---
name: business-rates
description: Turns your property's rateable value, current bill and any comparable evidence you hold into a written business rates position and a properly evidenced Check, Challenge and Appeal file: the rating list and multiplier your property actually sits on this year, which relief route genuinely still applies now that retail, hospitality and leisure relief cannot be newly claimed, a small business rate relief eligibility test against the real thresholds, a rates-position register showing the gross bill, the relief and the net bill, a check-challenge-evidence register naming every comparable and every document behind it, a case timeline tracking every Valuation Office and Valuation Tribunal deadline, and a gaps list. Use when you want to check whether your rateable value is right, you are about to raise a Check or a Challenge with the Valuation Office, your bill has jumped after the 2026 revaluation, or you are not sure which relief, if any, you are still entitled to.
---

# Your rateable value tested against the evidence, and a Check, Challenge or Appeal file built to the Valuation Office's own deadlines

You give this your current business rates bill, the rateable value shown on it, your lease or rent details, any comparable properties' rateable values you know of, photographs or floor plans of the property, and a note of any relief you currently claim. You get back a rates-position register showing which rating list and multiplier your property is actually charged under this year, whether small business rate relief or supporting small business relief genuinely applies, and a Check, Challenge and Appeal file built against the Valuation Office's own stages and deadlines, with every comparable and every document named in an evidence register. It will not decide whether your rateable value is wrong. Judging a valuation against comparable evidence is what a RICS-qualified surveyor or rating adviser is trained and regulated to do, and it will not tell you what proportion of a challenge like yours normally succeeds, because no published figure exists for a single independent venue's outcome.

## What it does

1. **Enumerate the property and the paperwork, from the bill and the account, not from memory.** Pull the current business rates bill, the rateable value it shows, its effective date, the property address exactly as billed, the trade description, and whether the property is already registered in a business rates valuation account. Record the lease or rent details, including any rent-free periods, and the trading entity named on the bill. Do this before any relief or challenge is discussed, because a case built on a remembered figure instead of the actual bill is the most common reason a Check gets rejected before it starts.

2. **Confirm which rating list, valuation date and multiplier the property is actually charged under this year.** "The most recent revaluation came into effect in England and Wales on 1 April 2026. It's based on open market rental values from 1 April 2024." So the current entry sits on the 2026 rating list, not the 2023 list an older article may still describe, and the rateable value itself "is its open market rental value on 1 April 2024, based on an estimate by the Valuation Office (VO)." Revaluations happen "every 3 years", so on that cycle the next one would fall around 1 April 2029, though gov.uk has not published a confirmed date for it as at 23 September 2026. Then read the multiplier: for the 2026 to 2027 year, a property below £500,000 rateable value uses "48 pence if your rateable value is £51,000 or more" or "43.2 pence if your rateable value is below £51,000" unless it qualifies for the lower retail, hospitality and leisure multiplier in step 3, and a rateable value of £500,000 or more uses "a multiplier of 50.8 pence" regardless of sector. Multiplying the rateable value by the correct figure gives the "basic business rates for the year", before any relief.

3. **Work out which relief route actually applies now, because the retail, hospitality and leisure discount has gone.** This is the step that catches out any article written before December 2025. Gov.uk is explicit: "You cannot make a new claim for retail, hospitality and leisure relief. From 1 April 2026, you will need to use rate multipliers to calculate your business rates bill." The 40 percent (2025 to 2026) and 75 percent (2024 to 2025) discount schemes have both ended; there is no percentage relief and no cap to apply for in the current year. What replaced it sits inside the multiplier itself: an eligible shop, restaurant, cafe, bar, pub, cinema, music venue, gym, spa or hotel below £500,000 rateable value uses "43 pence if your rateable value is £51,000 or more (up to £499,999)" or "38.2 pence if your rateable value is below £51,000", against the 48p or 43.2p everyone else pays, and "if you received the retail, hospitality and leisure rates relief, you will usually be eligible for these multipliers." Record the old RHL discount line as ended on 31 March 2026, and record separately whether the lower RHL multiplier from step 2 was actually applied to the bill.

4. **Test Small Business Rate Relief against the real thresholds and the one-property rule.** This relief is distinct from step 3 and is still running. "You will not pay business rates on a property with a rateable value of £12,000 or less, if that's the only property your business uses." "For properties with a rateable value of £12,001 to £15,000, the rate of relief will go down gradually from 100% to 0%", so "if your rateable value is £13,500, you'll get 50% off your bill." Eligibility needs the business to use "only one property", and a second property does not end it immediately: relief on the main property continues for "12 months if you got the second property before 27th November 2025" or "36 months if you got the second property on or after 27th November 2025", and can continue past that where "none of your other properties have a rateable value above £2,899" and "the total rateable value of all your properties is less than £20,000 (£28,000 in London)." Record the number of properties held and the acquisition date of any second one, because that date decides the grace period.

5. **Check supporting small business relief if the 2026 revaluation pushed the bill up.** This is a transitional cushion for anyone who lost relief at revaluation, not a permanent scheme. It applies where the bill "increased due to revaluation" and the business "lost some or all of your small business rate relief, rural rate relief, retail hospitality and leisure relief or 2023 supporting small business relief." For the 2026 to 2027 year the increase is capped at whichever is greater of £800 or a percentage of the 2025 to 2026 final bill: 5 percent up to £20,000 rateable value (£28,000 in London), 15 percent from £20,001 to £100,000, and 30 percent above £100,000. Record this as replacing, not adding to, the multiplier position worked out in steps 2 and 3.

6. **Build the Check file, because nothing can be challenged until the facts are confirmed first.** The Check stage confirms the factual details the valuation is built on: "floor area and number of rooms", the address, the description, splitting or merging, demolitions, renovations, or a Material Change of Circumstances such as "reconstruction or demolition of a neighbouring property or long-term disruptive roadworks" raised "while the issue is ongoing". "You need to raise a check case before you can challenge a valuation, even if the factual details are correct." Accepted evidence is "photographs, floor plans, rent agreements, a statement with extra information", uploaded as Word, Excel, PDF or image files. A Check on the outgoing 2023 valuation can now only be raised in narrow circumstances, including within 6 months of a VOA correction or, on the legal-decision route, by 30 September 2026. Once a decision arrives, "you have until 4 months after the Valuation Office has completed your check case to raise a challenge."

7. **Write the Challenge only where the facts support a genuine valuation dispute, with a proposed figure drawn from real comparables.** The grounds must be one the VOA recognises: "the valuation is wrong", "the property should not be valued at all", "the property needs to be split or merged", the published list details are wrong, or a legal decision on another property applies. The submission needs "the reason for your challenge", "evidence that the valuation is wrong", "a statement that supports your challenge", "a proposed new rateable value and the date it should start from", and rent details "even if you are the landlord". The deadlines run "within 4 months of receiving a check case decision", "within 16 months of your check case submission" where the challenge concerns a surrounding-area change, or once "the Valuation Office has not made a decision on your check case after 12 months." "You must submit all your evidence together when sending your challenge", and the same valuation cannot be challenged twice on "the same grounds". Never invent the proposed rateable value: it is drawn only from a comparable property's own published figure, supplied by the owner or the adviser, never estimated.

8. **Record the Appeal route, and what carries forward to the Valuation Tribunal.** Where the Challenge outcome is disputed, an appeal can go to the Valuation Tribunal "within 4 months of a challenge decision" or "18 months of you submitting a challenge" if the VOA has not replied. Critically, "you can only include the evidence you submitted during the check and challenge to the VOA", so nothing new can be added at this stage. A separate route exists for a penalty notice, appealable "within 28 days from the date on the penalty notice", and for a transitional certificate. Throughout, "you have to continue paying business rates until you receive the Valuation Tribunal's decision." Flag both points in the register so nobody stops paying, or misses the 28-day penalty window, while waiting on an outcome.

9. **Hand the finished register and evidence file to Codex and let it build the reporting files.** Claude hands over the property's rates position from steps 2 to 5, the relief route actually applying with its evidence, every Check, Challenge or Appeal already raised with its dates, and every piece of comparable or documentary evidence gathered, each with a file name and a date. Codex makes no judgement at all: it tabulates what it is given, tracks the deadlines against today's date, and writes anything unanswered into the gaps list. Run it from the folder holding the bill, the evidence and any correspondence:

   ```
   codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
   ```

   What comes back is the rates-position register, the check-challenge-evidence register, the case timeline showing every deadline as open or expired, and gaps.md, plus the counts you check in the next section.

10. **Package the file for the surveyor or rating adviser, naming every open question.** The finished output is a working file, not a challenge ready to submit: it lists the property's rates position, every piece of evidence gathered, and every deadline still open, with a single named question wherever a fact is close enough to be genuinely arguable. This is the point at which the file moves to a RICS-qualified surveyor or rating adviser, alongside the accountant, because deciding whether the evidence is strong enough to win a challenge is a valuation judgement this skill does not make.

## Then it checks

1. The rates-position register names the 2026 to 2027 multiplier actually applied, standard, small business, or the retail, hospitality and leisure rate, and records the rateable value band and the gov.uk page and date it was read from.
2. No row in any file states a retail, hospitality and leisure relief percentage or cap for the current year. Every property instead records either the lower RHL multiplier, supporting small business relief, or "none applicable", with the reason.
3. Every Challenge row has a matching Check row with a decision date recorded before it, and no Challenge appears in the case timeline without one.
4. Every Check, Challenge or Appeal row states which deadline it relies on and the date it is counted from, and the case timeline marks it as open, expired or met rather than leaving the status blank.
5. Every comparable property cited as evidence names its own address and its own rateable value, and every other evidence item names a file and a date; no row reads "similar properties nearby" with nothing else attached.
6. No rateable value, multiplier, relief threshold or deadline in any file is copied from a previous year's note or a template. Every one carries the date it was read this week and the gov.uk page it came from.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state a typical rates saving, a typical percentage reduction won on challenge, or a typical time to a decision for a single independent UK business. No published figure exists for one venue's outcome: the range genuinely runs from no change to a large cut depending on facts unique to that property, and a borrowed figure sets an expectation the Valuation Office was never going to meet.
- Never submit the Check or the Challenge itself, and never create or sign into the business rates valuation account on the owner's behalf. This skill prepares the file; submitting a factual claim to the Valuation Office under its penalty provisions for false information is the owner's or their agent's act, not this skill's.
- Never estimate a rateable value. A proposed figure in a Challenge is drawn only from a comparable property's own published rateable value that the owner or adviser supplies, never guessed or interpolated from a pattern.
- Never claim retail, hospitality and leisure relief as a percentage discount for the 2026 to 2027 year. It cannot be newly claimed. Only the lower RHL multiplier or supporting small business relief may apply, and the file must say plainly which one, or that neither does.
- Never carry a multiplier, threshold or relief rule forward from a previous year's file, a professional's earlier note, or this document itself. Every figure is read again on the day it is used and dated, because the multiplier and the relief rules both changed at the 2026 revaluation.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's own accountant and a RICS-qualified surveyor or professional rating adviser to check before any Check, Challenge or Appeal is submitted. A business rates challenge is specialist valuation territory beyond ordinary tax advice: it turns on comparable evidence and valuation judgement that only a qualified surveyor is trained to weigh. It is not a valuation, it is not a rating opinion, and it is not a ruling that any rateable value or relief shown is correct.

## Built from
- HM Revenue and Customs, "How to challenge your business rates valuation" (collection), https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/how-to-challenge-your-business-rates-valuation, published 10 October 2025, read 23 September 2026: the three-stage Check, Challenge, Appeal structure used across steps 6 to 8.
- HM Revenue and Customs, "Raising a check case to change your business property details", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/confirm-your-property-details, published 30 November 2020, last updated 1 April 2026, read 23 September 2026: when and how to raise a Check, the accepted evidence types, the deadline to raise a Check on the 2023 valuation, and the 4 month window to challenge after a Check decision, in step 6.
- HM Revenue and Customs, "Challenging your business rates valuation", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/challenge-the-valuation, published 30 November 2020, last updated 9 July 2026, read 23 September 2026: the challenge deadlines, valid grounds, required evidence and statement, and the one-challenge-per-ground rule, in step 7.
- HM Revenue and Customs, "Appealing your business rates to the Valuation Tribunal", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/appeal-the-outcome, published 30 November 2020, last updated 18 March 2026, read 23 September 2026: the appeal deadlines, the rule that only evidence already submitted to the Valuation Office can be used, the continued-payment rule, and the 28 day penalty notice appeal window, in step 8.
- GOV.UK, "Business rates relief: Small business rate relief", https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/small-business-rate-relief, the GOV.UK content API records this page first published and updated 17 December 2025, read 23 September 2026: the £12,000 and £15,000 thresholds and the multi-property grace period in step 4, and the 2026 to 2027 standard and small business multiplier figures quoted on the same page in step 2.
- GOV.UK, "Business rates relief: Retail, hospitality and leisure relief", https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/retail-hospitality-and-leisure-relief, the GOV.UK content API records this page first published and updated 17 December 2025, read 23 September 2026: the confirmation that retail, hospitality and leisure relief cannot be newly claimed from 1 April 2026, in step 3.
- GOV.UK, "Business rates relief: Supporting small business relief", https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/supporting-small-business-relief, the GOV.UK content API records this page first published and updated 17 December 2025, read 23 September 2026: the £800 and 5/15/30 percent transitional caps for the 2026 to 2027 year, in step 5.
- GOV.UK, "Estimate your business rates", https://www.gov.uk/estimate-your-business-rates, read 23 September 2026: the full 2026 to 2027 multiplier table, the £51,000 and £500,000 breakpoints, and the worked examples used in steps 2 and 3.
- GOV.UK, "Business rates: How your rates are calculated" and "Business rates: Revaluation", https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates/how-your-rates-are-calculated and https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates/revaluation, read 23 September 2026: the open market rental value basis dated 1 April 2024, the 1 April 2026 revaluation date, and the 3 year revaluation cycle, in step 2.

# business-rates

## You are given
The current business rates position for one or more properties of a single UK hospitality business, built from the current bill, the property's rating list entry and lease or rent details. For every property: the rateable value, its effective date, the rating list it sits on, the property address exactly as billed, whether it is a retail, hospitality or leisure property, the rateable value band it falls into, and the multiplier type and rate Claude has already decided applies for the 2026 to 2027 year. The relief route Claude has already decided applies, exactly one of small business rate relief, supporting small business relief, or none, with the relief amount or percentage and the evidence behind that decision. The gross bill and net bill Claude has already calculated. Every Check, Challenge or Appeal already raised or being prepared, with its stage, the date it was submitted, the decision date where one exists, and which deadline it relies on. Every piece of evidence gathered, comparable rateable values, photographs, floor plans, rent agreements, physical change records, or other documents, each with a file name and a date, and which stage and which property it supports. All judgement calls, including the multiplier applied, the relief route, the challenge grounds and the proposed rateable value where one has been decided, have already been made by the owner or their adviser and are supplied to you.

## Produce
Write into a `./business-rates-output/` folder:

1. `rates-position-register.csv` with these columns in this order: `property_ref`, `property_address_verbatim`, `rating_list`, `rateable_value_gbp`, `valuation_effective_date`, `is_retail_hospitality_or_leisure`, `multiplier_band`, `multiplier_type`, `multiplier_rate_pence_per_pound`, `gross_bill_gbp`, `relief_scheme`, `relief_amount_or_percent`, `net_bill_gbp`, `relief_evidence_ref`, `figures_read_date`. `property_ref` is P001 upward. `rating_list` is exactly one of `2026 rating list`, `2023 rating list`. `is_retail_hospitality_or_leisure` is `yes` or `no`. `multiplier_band` is exactly one of `below GBP 51,000`, `GBP 51,000 to GBP 499,999`, `GBP 500,000 or more`. `multiplier_type` is exactly one of `small business multiplier`, `standard multiplier`, `small business retail hospitality and leisure multiplier`, `retail hospitality and leisure multiplier`, `large property multiplier`. `relief_scheme` is exactly one of `small business rate relief`, `supporting small business relief`, `none applicable`, `other relief supplied by owner`.
2. `check-challenge-evidence-register.csv` with columns: `evidence_ref`, `property_ref`, `evidence_type`, `evidence_description_verbatim`, `supports_stage`, `comparable_property_address`, `comparable_rateable_value_gbp`, `document_date`, `evidence_file_name`. `evidence_type` is exactly one of `comparable rateable value`, `photograph`, `floor plan`, `rent agreement or lease extract`, `physical change to property`, `material change of circumstance`, `other document supplied`. `supports_stage` is exactly one of `check`, `challenge`, `appeal`. `comparable_property_address` and `comparable_rateable_value_gbp` are populated only where `evidence_type` is `comparable rateable value`, and are left empty otherwise.
3. `case-timeline.csv` with columns: `property_ref`, `stage`, `date_raised_or_submitted`, `decision_date`, `deadline_type`, `deadline_date`, `status`. `stage` is exactly one of `check`, `challenge`, `appeal`. `deadline_type` is exactly one of `4 months of check decision`, `16 months of check submission for a surrounding-area change`, `12 months with no check decision`, `4 months of challenge decision`, `18 months of challenge submission with no reply`, `28 days of penalty notice`, `not supplied`. `status` is exactly one of `open`, `expired`, `met`, `not applicable`, worked out by comparing `deadline_date` to the date this file is produced.
4. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every property with no rateable value or no multiplier recorded; every property with a relief scheme recorded but no `relief_evidence_ref`; every challenge row in `case-timeline.csv` with no matching check row carrying a `decision_date`; every row in `case-timeline.csv` with an empty `deadline_type` or `deadline_date`; every comparable rateable value cited with no address or no figure; and any figure supplied without a date attached to it.

## Rules
- Codex tabulates, dates and cross checks only. It never decides a multiplier, never chooses a relief route, never sets the grounds or the proposed rateable value for a challenge, and never judges whether a piece of evidence is strong enough. Every one of those was decided before the file reached Codex.
- Never mark retail, hospitality and leisure relief as a percentage or a cap for the current year. It is not a claimable scheme for 2026 to 2027. Any supplied figure that describes it that way is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`, not corrected silently.
- Never estimate a rateable value, a comparable's rateable value, or a deadline date. A missing figure is an empty cell and a line in `gaps.md`.
- Never calculate a deadline status from anything other than the date supplied for `deadline_date` compared against the date this file is produced. Do not infer a deadline from a stage name alone.
- Never write a typical rates saving, a typical percentage reduction won on challenge, or any industry benchmark into any file. No such figure exists for a single independent UK hospitality business and none is to be recorded.
- Never carry a rateable value, a multiplier, a relief threshold or a deadline forward from a previous year's file. Only the figures supplied for this run are used, and a prior year's figure supplied for comparison is recorded in a separate column and never used in a calculation.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every quoted property address, evidence description and comparable address is copied exactly, including its punctuation and capitalisation.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner's own accountant and a RICS-qualified surveyor or professional rating adviser to check before any Check, Challenge or Appeal is submitted. It applies supplied decisions to the supplied facts and is not a ruling that any rateable value or relief shown is correct.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the net bill total across all properties, the count of properties by `relief_scheme` value, the count of properties recording `is_retail_hospitality_or_leisure` as `yes` with the multiplier type actually applied to each, the count of case-timeline rows by `status`, the count of comparable rateable values cited with a complete address and figure, the count of evidence rows with no matching property in the rates-position register, and the `gaps.md` item count.