Unclaimed business rate credit balances
Case reference FOI2018/01019
Published 4 October 2018
Request
Could you please reply to me with the following report attached: - Unclaimed business rate credit balances. We are cognizant of the fact that Billing Authorities hold on account sums of money that are due to be returned to ratepayers and for a variety of reasons have not been repaid. I therefore request a breakdown of credit balances accrued since your earliest records, for the amounts owing to all incorporated companies within your authority's billing area, including the following information:
A. The legal name of each business in respect of which non-domestic rate credit balances remain payable
B. The value of overpayment in each case which remains unclaimed
C. The years(s) in which overpayment was made
D. The hereditament address
E. The legal name of each business in respect of which non-domestic rate credit balances have been written back on to the NDR account
F. The value of write back in each case which remains unclaimed
G. The years(s) in which the write back was made (if available)
H. The hereditament address that the write back relates to.
Response
Guildford Borough Council publishes information regarding credits on its website. You can find the files at:
https://www.guildford.gov.uk/article/17551/Overpaid-credit-accounts-business-rates
- along with an explanation of the contents.
The following information that you requested is not available:
Property Address and Reference: Accounts can cover multiple properties, and credits are held at account level. This means that we cannot simply link a credit to a property. It is therefore not possible to provide the property address.
Written off credits: The Council does not hold a list of genuine credits that have been written off of accounts. Credits can occur for a variety of reasons and we make no distinction when writing them off the system (we have no need to do this for the purposes of Business Rates). However credits are not written off simply because a ratepayer has failed to claim them, as I hope the age of some of the credits on the published list will show.
As the information that is available is already in the public domain I consider this information to be exempt from disclosure on request under Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it is already available elsewhere.
Documents
This is Guildford Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.