Torbay MP calls for business rates reform to stave off ‘strange death’

A full-scale reform of business rates is the only way to stop the ‘strange death’ of Devon’s town centres, according to a local MP. Torbay’s Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling made his points during a debate in Westminster Hall on business rates relief.

A full-scale reform of business rates is the only way to stop the ‘strange death’ of Devon’s town centres, according to a local MP.
Torbay’s Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling made his points during a debate in Westminster Hall on business rates relief.
He said: “The challenge we have faced over recent years is the strange death of our town centres, whether that is a result of out-of-town shopping, online shopping or, more recently, the failure under the Conservatives to reform the business rates system.
“We now need the new Labour government to step up to the mark and ensure that reform happens.”
He also said the government’s decision to increase the amount employers must pay in National Insurance had exacerbated the problems. He went on: “The worry for many opposition members, I am sure, is that the current government sees business as a cash cow. If they bleed the cow too much, it will die.”
He said town centres needed to be ‘re-imagined’, citing the example of Torquay where a new cinema, pool hall and NHS diagnostic centre have recently opened. 
“That is what we need to do to our town centres,” he said, and called for a ‘root-and-branch’ reform of the business rates system, to be replaced potentially with a system based on the commercial value of land.
He said independent shops could end up carrying too much of the burden compared to national chains, and added: “A major rebalancing across the United Kingdom would significantly reduce land values in some of our more deprived communities, such as mine in Torbay, driving the productivity and regeneration in our town centres that we desperately need.
“The only saviour for the Labour government would be growth in the economy, because that would get us out of the rut that we are in.”