Every commercial property in England was revalued on 1 April 2026. If you occupy a shop, office, warehouse, workshop or surgery, the rateable value your bill is built on changed on that date, whether or not anything about your property changed.
Most people look at the new bill, wince, and pay it. It is worth doing a bit more than that.
What a rateable value actually is
Your rateable value is the Valuation Office's estimate of what your property would have let for on the open market on a fixed date. For the 2026 list that date is 1 April 2024.
Two things follow from this, and both surprise people.
First, the valuation has nothing to do with today's market. If rents in your town have fallen since spring 2024, that does not affect your 2026 assessment. It will be picked up at the next revaluation.
Second, it has nothing to do with the rent you actually pay. Your lease might be old, or generous, or include a rent-free period. The valuation assumes a standard letting on standard terms. A tenant paying well under market rent can still be correctly assessed at a much higher figure - and a tenant paying over the odds is not automatically over-assessed either.
Why so many assessments are wrong
The Valuation Office has to value roughly two million properties to a deadline. It cannot inspect them all. So valuations are built from records - previous surveys, plans, returns from ratepayers, and schemes of value applied across whole estates and streets at once.
That process is reasonable in the aggregate and unreliable in the particular. The errors we see most often are dull rather than dramatic:
- Floor areas carried forward from a survey done years ago, before a demise was split, extended or handed back
- A property description that no longer matches what the building is used for
- Ancillary space, mezzanines and storage treated as though it were prime
- Physical disadvantages - low eaves, poor access, an awkward shape, a shallow yard - not reflected at all
- A unit grouped with comparables that are not really comparable
None of these get corrected on their own. The assessment stands until somebody challenges it, and you pay on it in the meantime.
The 2023 list has closed
If you were thinking about appealing your old assessment, that window has gone. The 2023 rating list closed to new Checks and Challenges on 31 March 2026. Anything you want to argue now has to be argued on the 2026 list.
That is not necessarily bad news. A new list means a fresh valuation, built on fresh assumptions, and a fresh opportunity to test whether the facts behind it are right.
Five multipliers instead of two
Alongside the revaluation, England moved from two multipliers to five. Your bill is the rateable value multiplied by whichever one applies to your property, before any relief:
| Multiplier | 2026/27 | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Small business | 43.2p | Rateable value of £50,999 or less |
| Standard | 48.0p | Rateable value of £51,000 or more, where no other multiplier applies |
| Small retail, hospitality and leisure | 38.2p | Qualifying retail, hospitality and leisure property below the small business threshold |
| Standard retail, hospitality and leisure | 43.0p | Qualifying retail, hospitality and leisure property above the small business threshold |
| High value | 50.8p | Rateable value of £500,000 or more |
The one to watch is the last. A property assessed at £500,000 pays the higher rate on the whole value, not just the part above the threshold. If your assessment has landed just over that line, the accuracy of the valuation matters a great deal more than it did on the old list.
Transitional arrangements also cap how quickly bills can rise after a revaluation, so the number on your bill may not be a straight rateable value multiplied by the rate above.
What to do about it
Start by looking at your own entry on the Valuation Office's website and checking the basics: the floor areas, the description, and the date of the survey it was built from. If those do not match the property you actually occupy, you have something worth pursuing.
If they do match and the figure still looks high, the question becomes a valuation one - how your property compares with others nearby - and that is harder to judge from the outside.
Either way, it costs nothing to ask. Send us the bill or just the address and we will tell you honestly whether there is a case.
Chartered Surveyor. Twelve years in business rates at Altus Group (now Ryan), four of them as a Director, and more than fifteen years of rating work across the South of England and London. RICS-regulated firm no. 897221.
Not sure whether your assessment is right?
Send us the rates bill or just the property address. We will look at the published assessment and tell you honestly whether there is a case worth pursuing. There is no charge for that first view.
Get in touchThis article is general information about how business rates work in England, written for ratepayers. It is not advice on any particular property, and the rules change. If a decision turns on it, take advice on the facts of your own case.