Analyse Local

Analyse Local offers two core services to local authorities, both services focus on non-domestic rates, enabling council Revenues Departments to bill and recover as much as possible. With the increase in retention rising to 75% in 2020, billing and recovering more, is more important than ever.

Business rates appeals

The first service is used to identify the risk to local authorities of any rates appeals that are outstanding. The risk is that the local authority might need to pay back significant sums to the business ratepayer if the appeal is upheld and therefore due a rebate.

Local authority estimates of the net addition to the appeals provision is £1.1 billion for 2019-20, this report can be viewed here. This means each local authority will need to be aware of what financial risk this poses for them.

• The average non-domestic rates appeal takes over a year
• As of May 2019, there was a backlog of 69,000 appeals dating back to the 2010 list

The Analyse Local team, consisting of 65 desk-based analysts, will review the data from the whole of the UK and use this data to look at similar properties with the same profile and usage to compare rates and make forecasts. These forecasts will look at the potential risk of the property being downrated for business rates.

A monthly report is compiled and sent to the local authority clients and this is used to ensure they have made enough provisions for rates appeals that fall in favour of the ratepayer.

Non-domestic rates retention- identifying new areas of income

Another area of expertise for Analyse Local is looking at missing or undervalued property. This includes new developments and is especially pertinent given the trend for combined developments bringing workspace and living space together in one building.

There is also a current trend for shared workspaces such as WeWork. Ensuring we keep on top of current trend in building, design and usage means Analyse Local can look at data and trends in terms of rateable value.

Analyse Local uses big data sets that are analysed carefully by their desk-based teams to look at potential revenue generation. This is an entirely virtual service and uses technology such as:

• Data sets (these are drawn from various sources)
• Arial photography
• Mapping software and data from online sources

This product is offered by Analyse Local on a no win no fee basis and is therefore self-financing. The one-off fee will be less than half the increase in yield for the first year of business rates collection.

With Analyse Local covering the very start of a rates recovery journey in identifying ways for local authorities to increase revenue, should the ratepayer not oblige with payments, then Excel can help with recovery and enforcement once a liability order is obtained.