Covid-19 Birmingham City Council Business Rates Grants
Birmingham City Council have approximately 16,000 business which may be eligible and are adopting a pragmatic, risk-based approach top payment of the Business Rates Grants. This involves making payments directly to business bank accounts via BACS and carrying out pre-validation checks. This targeted approach enables payments to some businesses earlier than others, whilst ensuring that more stringent checks are applied to the medium and higher risk groups:
Lowest Risk
Group A) RV less than £51K, paid up for 2019/20 & bank details held
Group B) RV less than £51K, paid up for 2019/20 but no bank details
Medium Risk
Group C) Qualify for small Business Rate Relief (SBRR) with NIL to pay and bank details
Group D) Qualify for SBRR with NIL to pay, no bank details
Higher Risk
Group E) RV less than £51k with multiple properties linked to PIN in RBIS – mixture of D/D & not.
Birmingham City Council’s Approach to Making Payments
On the 2nd April, an Online form was made available on the BCC website enabling Rate payers to submit their details:
https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/xfp/form/714
The website and the Online form contains guidance on how to check the Valuation Agency website https://www.gov.uk/correct-your-business-rates for the correct Rateable value as well as link and a declaration on State Aid limits www.gov.uk/state-aid; both of which support validation, fraud prevention and the ability to retrieve payments where necessary. The submitting of a form will enable Rate payers to provide business bank details and Revenues staff to carry out other checks against the data provided, but primarily it will enable payments to be made more quickly and efficiently and enable an Audit trail for post payment Government assurance. Validation checks will begin on Monday 6th April in preparation for the processing of payments later in the week.
Whilst every effort is being made to obtain bank account details for businesses to enable the grants to be paid by BACS, where businesses do not contact Birmingham City Council or respond to their requests for bank details, they may be forced with send a small number of grants by cheque.
