Next year's proposed business rates revaluation will now be postponed.

Communities secretary Robert Jenrick confirmed that the tax changes will no longer take place in 2021 to help reduce uncertainty for businesses affected by the Coronavirus crisis. Legislation had been introduced to bring the next revaluation forward by one year from 2022.

All retailers, as well as hospitality and leisure businesses, have already been granted one-year business rates holiday as part of government measures to stabilise the economy during the pandemic.

“We have listened to businesses and their concerns about the timing of the 2021 business rates revaluation and have acted to end that uncertainty by postponing the change,” stated Jenrick. “Now is the time for us to continue to focus on supporting businesses affected by the pandemic, including through our unprecedented package of almost £10 billion in business rates relief.”

The government said it was continuing work on a "fundamental” review of the business rates regime, with a call for evidence due to be published in the coming months.

Property services firm Colliers understands that the government will now consider whether to introduce changes on 1 April 2022.

John Webber, head of business rates at Colliers International, said: “There is of course a debate about how properties may be valued for a revaluation in 2022 - given current market conditions, an Antecedent Valuation Date (AVD) of 1 April 2020 would be anyone’s guess as the current market is in flux."

The AVD for the 2021 revaluation was 1 April 2019, when the market was in a much more stable place, stated Webber, suggesting that it would be sensible to keep to that date for a 2022 revaluation given values then were not tainted by COVID-19 and the Valuation Office Agency has already almost completed all the work on this.

"But this would need to be combined with the government looking closely at how much it plans to raise from Business Rates in 2022 and the sensible approach would be to accept that tax take should be lower – reducing it from the £26 billion currently taken a year to around £20 billion."

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