Our Services
Helping you make the right decisions.
Our services guard your finances at every turn—before, during, and after spending. We guide you through wise decisions, challenge inaccuracies, especially from local authorities, and strive to reclaim any funds that rightfully belong to you. Let us protect and maximize your budget, every step of the way.
Strategy
Rooted in decades of combined experience, our strategic advice encompasses subtle cues of market changes, proactive insights for upcoming moves, and integration of your organisational goals with the world of business rates. Preparing for an acquisition or pondering a property disposal? Maybe you're eyeing an extensive refurbishment or considering ground-breaking redevelopment? Align your objectives with the most reliable strategies designed to navigate the labyrinth that is business rates and draw maximum advantage. You'll find a responsive partner in us, ever ready to strategically guide you through each step.
Business Rates Strategy and Specialised Reports
Our specialised advisory services on business rates are designed to cater to your specific property holdings. This involves creating customized reports to assist you in making informed decisions, particularly in the context of disposals, acquisitions, redevelopments, and refurbishments.
Appeals and Deletions
If you're considering renovating, developing, or repurposing your property, a deletion appeal could be a valuable strategy to save costs. We'll guide you through the intricate process, enhancing your likelihood of a successful appeal from the earliest feasible effective date. Rest assured, we will persist until your refund is successfully secured.
Empty Property Rates Mitigation
Empty properties can still incur business rates, but there are solutions that can be harnessed within the bounds of prevailing law such as intermittent occupation, charity occupation, and charity exhibitions that can mitigate these costs. We help identify and apply these opportunities to reduce your liability.
Community Infrastructure Levy Mitigation
This levy can be a significant cost for developers. We can advise you on potential reductions or exemptions you might qualify for and support you in the application process.
Completion Notice Negotiation
We will ensure that a completion notice is not raised prematurely for your newly constructed commercial property, and we'll negotiate for a favourable date on your behalf.
Safeguard
It's not a cost-cutting exercise; it's a protection strategy. In the complex matrix of business rates, misconceptions or oversights can lead businesses to unnecessarily high expenditures. This is where our rate management services shine, cutting through the convolution to identify reduction opportunities and exemptions you might qualify for. Our aim is unambiguous—we strive to ensure that you invest solely what is obligatory and not a pound more. Trust our expertise to minimize your business rates liabilities and meticulously safeguard your hard-earned profits.
Rate Payment Management
Business rates can be confusing and difficult to manage. We offer a tailor-made service that can handle your payments, ensuring that they are made in full and on time. This service helps you avoid penalties, maintain a clear record, and free up resources to focus on your core business. Our service can also provide your business with valuable insight into your rates spend, broken down into Capex, Opex, Service Charge Recoverable items and Inclusive Deals. Being able to see upcoming costs allows your business to make commercially advantageous business decisions.
Exemptions
Certain properties and situations are exempt from business rates or are eligible for reductions. From listed properties to complex situations involving CPO’s and asbestos, we can identify if any of these apply to your premises and help you secure the savings.
Tone and MCC Appeals
We are equipped to deal with the nuances of 'tone of the list' and 'material change of circumstance' appeals. As experts, we will present and argue a convincing case on your behalf, challenging unjust rateable values, and ensuring that your inclusive deal properties are captured fairly, and rateable values set as low as possible. Engagement ahead of revaluations can prove hugely fruitful for landlords.
Salvage
Imagine a guardian who's tirelessly patrolling to protect your interest and bounces into action when they see a chance to recover your funds. That's VS Boateng & Associates for you. Our recovery services are focused on auditing your business rate payments, pinpointing any errors or overpayments to secure a refund. Instead of viewing it solely as a financial correction, we see it as an honourable opportunity to redefine your business' resource landscape by pumping recouped funds back into it, contributing to your growth story.
Business Rates Audit
Whether it’s supporting an insolvency practitioner to recover what is due, or supporting a business to ensure that cash isn’t being left on the table, our business rates audit service is forensic in approach and leaves no stone unturned. We thoroughly inspect process and spend, to identify and rectify any weaknesses, ensuring that value for money is being secured and that nothing is being left on the table.
Business Rate MOT
We conduct a rigorous stress test on your existing business rates process, be it internal or outsourced. Our goal is to pinpoint areas where potential cash has been overlooked, such as suboptimal appeal outcomes, overlooked exemptions, unclaimed refunds, or missed opportunities for savings. It's a comprehensive, one-time opportunity to review and optimize your current implementation strategy.
Case Studies
Royal Albert Docks
Represented ABP in formulating the business rates strategy for Royal Albert Docks—a 4.7 million sq ft mixed-use project halted after phase 1. Our approach involved addressing assertive Completion Notices, leading to the case being elevated to the Upper Tribunal. Additionally, we successfully negotiated a ground breaking allowance for the site, minimizing payables to the utmost extent. This resulted in seven figure savings.
Television Centre, W1
We designed and implemented the rating strategy for Stanhope as they breathed new life into this cherished historic site, culminating in the creation of 2.3 million sq ft of space in Phase 1. Through our relentless dedication, we removed all void costs for both the commercial and residential facets of the site, a monumental feat upheld since 2013. Our endeavours have yielded even figure savings, marking a thrilling success story in urban revitalisation.