Business Rates will not be taken on April 1st to help support businesses affected by Coronavirus (Covid-19).

Cllr Carl Ollerhead, Manchester City Council’s executive member for finance and human resources, said: “Business Rate payments will be delayed for Manchester businesses in April and direct debits will not be taken. It’s important that we can support businesses and minimise their expenditure while relief and support from central Government is put into action.

“We understand this will be a worrying time for business owners of all sizes and we will do what we can to help as the situation evolves.

“Information is available on the Council website for business owners, including business rates, sick pay for employees, and links through to the Government loan scheme.”

Support from Manchester City Council:

To support businesses that may be struggling at this time, we have agreed the following actions around Business Rates:

• We will not submit a claim to banks for any direct debits that are due in April until the 100% Retail Relief has been applied. We will reprofile payment arrangements over the remaining 11 months where appropriate.
• We would urge all businesses to pay what they can and seek advice where possible from their bank or other business support;
• We have suspended all bailiff action to recover business rates that are overdue until the end of June;
• For businesses that contact us, we will agree special payment plans so that the business rates due for 2020/21 are split over 9 months from July 2020 to March 2021, meaning that businesses will not have to pay anything until July;
• For businesses that are in the retail, hospitality or leisure industry we have suspended all recovery action for an initial three month period. We will consider requests from other businesses and organisations based on their circumstances.

We would urge all businesses to keep in touch with us, ensure that they are getting all the reliefs and support that they are entitled to, and to let us know how we can support them during this challenging period.

Given the demands on our contact centre, we would request that all contact is via email on the following email address:

[email protected]