A YORK MP has called for fundamental reform of business rates after traders told her how soaring valuations could price them out of the high street.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell said she was pressing for a meeting with Marcus Jones, Local Government Minister with responsibility for business rates, to see how a new system could ‘save the Great British high street.’

She spoke out after The Press revealed on Monday how a bizarre lottery of winners and losers had been thrown up in York and North Yorkshire by new rateable values for businesses unveiled by the Government.

We revealed some properties - such as the National Railway Museum, the Lamb and Lion pub in High Petergate and Alligator wholefoood store in Fishergate - were seeing massive hikes, while others were finding their draft valuations, which help determine the amount they pay in business rates, frozen or even cut.

The Valuation Office Agency said then it used a wide range of property information, including rental and other evidence, to compare values across similar types of properties in order to set the rateable value.

Ms Maskell, who has held a meeting with traders across the west of York at the Gateway Centre in Acomb, said the Press story had helped illustrate how ‘broken’ the business rate system was.

She said: “The recent valuation is set to see the rates rise even further for many businesses in the city, some saying that this could price them out of the high street.”

She claimed a local Valuations Office representative had admitted at the meeting that rateable values were “skewed” due to inflated levels of rent but he said the problem was out of the Valuations Office’s control.

York Press:

“He explained that they, as the agency, carry out a review of properties every five years as a statutory requirement from the Local Government Finance Act 1988. The law needs to change.

“It is clear that the Business Rate model is broken and is failing businesses and failing communities.”

Sue Hunter, a York councillor and businesswoman who chairs the Acomb Alive Traders Association, said it was set up in 2012 to tackle the problem of empty shops, and it quickly established that business rates were a key factor in preventing people starting up new businesses. She said it supported a full reform of the business rate system.