Client: George Wimpey
Our client, George Wimpey, recently purchased a former campus owned by the University of East London. The developer intends to build over 1,000 new homes on the site, which includes the conversion of the main academic building into 106 residential units.
Since the bulk of the original educational buildings were still standing, George Wimpey was presented with a business rates bill of over £20,000 per month by the local authority. As the length of time taken to gain planning permission was significantly longer than had been anticipated, the rates bill was growing and there was an annual cost of over £180,000.
Our approach
In order to reduce this level of property taxation, we approached the Valuation Office with two arguments. Firstly, that the VO had failed to delete out of assessment part of the site that had already been demolished. Secondly, we were also able to illustrate that sufficient building works - such as the ripping out of services and asbestos removal - had already taken place which rendered the buildings incapable of beneficial occupation.
Result
The Valuation Office inspected the site and accepted our arguments. We not only secured a refund of over £120,000 for George Wimpey, but we also provided open-ended savings of £20,000 per month.
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