Client: Surrey County Council

Surrey County Council has a portfolio of over 600 properties, ranging from offices and storage space to schools, libraries and fire stations. Faced with a portfolio RV of some £31m, the Council appointed us to appeal its rates bills to ensure it was paying the correct amount of taxation, and to manage the entire rates payment process.

The latter was of concern to the Council because it had historically paid all of its property rates in a single annual instalment. Although there was the potential to receive bank interest if the payments were spread across a ten-month period, the process proved inefficient to administer manually, without the benefit of sophisticated IT software.

Our solution
Our rating surveyors analysed its assessments and identified which should be appealed. Timing was very important as we sought to ensure that the negotiations on appeals were conducted at the most advantageous stage alongside those for other occupiers. We have also been proactive in keeping abreast of the many changes that occur within the portfolio, where the Council might have vacated or sub-let to other organisations.

Meanwhile, one of the largest tasks for our Rates Payment Management team was to deal with the data collation and entry for a portfolio of 600, but once entered onto our unique IT system, the next stages of dealing with demands, payments, remittances, budgeting reports and updating changes to the portfolio during the year, were much more straightforward.

The results
Our rating surveyors have secured savings of £2.75m to date for Surrey County Council, with significant additional savings expected. At the same time, our Rates Payment Management team were successful in discharging the Council’s payments on a monthly basis, with our services entirely self-financed by the Council’s gain in interest.