Business Rates Revaluation: 2026 Handbook
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Although only three years since the last Rating Revaluation, April 2026’s new Rating List is expected to provide some dramatic changes in individual property valuations. This, together with fundamental changes in the approach to business rate multipliers, is likely to have a material impact on annual rate liability for many of the UK’s businesses.
Occupying or owning property is expensive, often one of the largest financial commitments for any business. Contentious and increasingly onerous, business rates remain a major and complex element of the overall cost of occupation.
From 1 April 2026, businesses are facing potentially large changes in this liability (both up and down), but with limited ability to plan ahead accurately. This impact can be serious: forecast too high and valuable resources will be diverted from growth/investment decisions; pitch too low and an unavoidable cost will sit in the corporate P&L.
This uncertainty is never welcome, especially in our current challenging global economic environment. The position will only be fully clear as we move toward the end of 2025, giving ratepayers less than six months to meaningfully prepare.
But anticipating future movement and thinking now about how to mitigate the potential impact can significantly support businesses’ forward planning.
With this in mind, Montagu Evans has undertaken a review of market activity to provide greater clarity on the likely direction of valuations.
This report provides a high-level view of how values and liabilities may be impacted and what businesses should do now to best prepare themselves before the end of March 2026.
It focuses on the three main property asset classes: retail, office and industrial & logistics. Impacts will vary considerably for each, reflecting not just the nature of each property but its location. The final details are yet to be confirmed, but some may benefit from falling rate liabilities, while others, particularly occupiers of larger properties, could see very significant increases.
We also include an overview of the Government’s timeline, background on the likely changes, advice from our sector experts and a checklist to help prepare.
On top of this, we would encourage businesses to speak to our business rates specialists to (a) better understand next year’s impact on their particular circumstances and (b) develop appeal strategies to identify and challenge liabilities at the earliest opportunity.”
- Foreword