A Top of the Pops-style chart of the biggest business rateable values in Milton Keynes was revealed at a meeting looking at the uncertain state of the council’s covid-hit finances.
Centre:mk flagship store John Lewis sits at the peak of the business pile with a whopping rateable value of £14,830,000, followed by supermarket giant Tesco with an equally eye-watering figure topping £9 million.
Other big names in the list of 24 businesses and organisations included Waitrose, the OU, Asda, Santander, Network Rail, and Sainsbury’s.
In total there are 8,093 business properties in the city with a total rateable value of £421million. Around 1,000 properties are empty.
Rateable values are used to work out how much the firms and organisations eventually cough up to Milton Keynes Council, which collects a total of £215 million.
After dividing the pile up and sending a raft of cash to Whitehall, the borough is left with around £54.3 million, a meeting heard on Tuesday.
The reliance on retail left one councillor uncomfortable.
Cllr Allan Rankine (Cons, Bletchley Park) said: “I feel fairly uncomfortable in terms of the level of uncertainty and the levels of risk around business rates, particularly the fact we are dependent on two big sectors, warehousing and retail.
“Retail, the biggest sector, isn’t doing well and some of these major ratepayers have been publicly struggling to achieve profitability.
“If any of these companies fail, our rate levels do go down significantly,
“I hope the council notes the importance of the retail sector and how much we need to do as much as we can to protect it,” he added.
Steve Richardson, the council’s director of finance and resources, told the budget and resources scrutiny committee that the council’s share of the business rates cake, had fallen by £6 million.
All the numbers are being fed into the council’s budget-making machine ready for decisions in December.
Mr Richardson said: “You can see who is Top of the Pops. Unsurprisingly you will see a lot of supermarkets feature on this list.
“These are by far the most significant ratepayers and carry the biggest risk in a sense for the council because if those businesses are not here in the future, or unable to pay their rates, there is a large financial consequence for the authority.”
But Mr Richardson also said because the council had done well from business rates over the years, it will be allowed to fall further before the Government helps.
There is also the looming prospect of businesses appealing for rate relief because they have been hit by covid-19.
Mr Richardson said the council already assumes £21 million will be won by businesses on appeal because the city’s rateable value is “too high”.
“What we have seen since covid-19 is a threefold increase in check challenge appeals being lodged by businesses,” he said.
“This could have a very significant impact on our rateable value of our businesses.”
© MKFM News 2020
