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What the Budget means for Uttlesford's pubs, shops and cafés

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A night panorama of Great Dunmow’s Market Place and High Street under strings of Christmas lights: rows of lit shopfronts and the Saracen’s Head hotel, decorated with blue lights and a star, around a wet, empty junction
Christmas lights in the Market Place, Great Dunmow, December 2016 Credit: Mark Seton, via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

If you run a pub, shop, café, hairdresser or other high-street business in Uttlesford, today’s Budget may lower your business rates bill from April 2027, or cap how much it rises. The Government says that, from April, retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England will see their rates “either frozen in real terms, reduced, or cut to zero”.

What was announced

All of it starts on 1 April 2027, and all of it is for England.

  • All pubs, social clubs and live music venues, whatever their size: relief rises from 15% to 35% of the bill. The Government puts this at an average of over £3,000 per pub next year. The only exception is the very largest music venues, with a rateable value of £1m or more, which stay on 15%.
  • Small shops, cafés, pubs and other retail, hospitality and leisure businesses: if your property is your business’s only one and its rateable value is £18,000 or less, you’ll pay no business rates at all. The limit is £12,000 now. Between £18,001 and £21,000, the relief tapers off. This is for small properties only, so a small pub may pay nothing, while a bigger one still gets the 35% off. The Government expects it to take an extra 3,500 pubs, 3,900 restaurants, 2,200 cafés and 1,700 hairdressers and beauty salons in England out of business rates.
  • A real-terms freeze: for retail, hospitality and leisure properties of any size, any rise in the bill in 2027/28 and 2028/29 will be capped at the rate of inflation. The cap doesn’t cover rises from improving the property, or from losing other reliefs.
  • Small businesses on transitional help since 2023: “supporting small business relief” limits how fast bills can rise for small businesses that lose other relief at a revaluation. Those who have had it since 2023 will keep it for one more year, from April 2027. The Government says that’s around 37,000 businesses in England, saving an average of £3,000.
  • Appeals: the Valuation Tribunal’s £150 and £300 fees for business rates appeals are abolished, and fees already paid on appeals against the 2026 values will be refunded.
  • Vape shops and adult gaming centres lose the lower rates for retail, hospitality and leisure, and vape shops lose small business rate relief.

Line chart of small business rate relief, as a share of the bill, by rateable value from £0 to £25,000. Now: no business rates up to £12,000, with relief falling steadily to nothing at £15,000. From April 2027, for retail, hospitality and leisure properties: none up to £18,000, falling to nothing at £21,000. The area between the two lines is shaded as newly covered. The new taper is assumed to fall steadily, as the current one does.

What to do now

Nothing yet. Uttlesford District Council (UDC) sends out business rates bills and applies relief, and the bills for 2027/28 will go out in the spring. If you’re not sure of your property’s rateable value, you can check it online.

Some of these changes need new rules before April. When the Government publishes its guidance for 2027/28, we’ll publish a full guide: who gets what, how to check your bill, and who to ask.

Where Greens stand

Greens back small, local businesses, which, as our 2024 manifesto put it, “are currently paying taxes for the services they use”, unlike many global corporations. So the extra help for pubs, shops and cafés is welcome.

But business rates are a tax on buildings: improve your premises and your bill can go up. In the long run, Greens would replace them with a Land Value Tax, charged on the value of the land alone, not on what’s built on it. Until then, our manifesto proposed letting councils “exempt socially and economically essential local enterprises from business rates”: in a district like ours, the last shop or pub in a village.

Sources

HM Treasury

  • Budget 2026 — the Budget report (HC 726), 28 October 2026.

GOV.UK

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