THREAD: this is about the ghastly treatment of business by local Councils, specifically the @cityoflondon (cc @MayorofLondon ), and the broken Business Rates system 1/

Last year, completely out of the blue, we @DigmeFitness were sent a Biz rates invoice for a storage unit in the basement of one of the buildings we occupy. We’d occupied the building for two years, with not a hint of a separate rates invoice for the basement unit 2/

The storage unit itself is tiny and in a basement with no windows or ventilation. At c.150 sq ft it would be perfectly normal to assume it’s below the rateable threshold and hence why no invoice had been received. 3/

In round numbers, the invoice was for c.£100k. A one hundred thousand pound bill. For space that’s not fit for anything. To put it in context, I’ve only once ever even been in this shoebox of a room. 4/

As you might imagine, I fell off my chair. £100k is not a small sum of money. Moreover, the invoice was accompanied by aggressive language saying that we need to fork out this money immediately or face penalties. 5/

The bill was for the previous two years which we’d occupied the site. The valuation applied to the property was astronomic. Upon closer inspection, they’d got the measurement of the site wrong. 6/

They’d used the number of square feet of the unit as the number of square *metres*, thereby increasing the rated size of the unit by approximately 11x . 7/

So of course I called up @cityoflondon and explained this. They said (paraphrased) “not my problem, that is the Valuation Office. Pick it up with them. You still owe us.” 8/

So at this point, we have to go through a standard rates appeal process with the VOA, but we still have to find £100k. I pleaded with the @cityoflondon but eventually they sent Bailiffs round, threatened to seize our operating assets and shut us down. So we had to pay. 9/

We went through the painstaking appeal process and eventually, 4 months later, we won. Finally, we thought!

That was Jan 2020. We are in April. The @cityoflondon have been sitting on £100k of our money for 10 weeks since the appeal went through and 8 months since we paid 10/

What makes matters worse is we can’t recoup the penalty interest included in the original rates invoice or the debt collection fees. And now, there is no way for us to charge interest on the cash that we should never have had to pay in the first place 11/

There is no right to recourse when it comes to Rates or the Valuation Office. I previously escalated a complaint when they didn’t deal with a (successful) appeal in a timely fashion. I got a ‘sorry’ letter, but no financial recompense. 12/

The system is utterly broken. We have been quite literally robbed by the authorities. It’s grotesquely asymmetric and the VOA are completely legally protected from wrongdoing, even when the consequences are seismic. 13/

We’ve had to shut our business to trade due to #Covid_19 and need this money to pay people. The @cityoflondon aren’t even picking up the phone or responding to emails.

It’s wrong on every level and needs fixing urgently. CC @MayorofLondon 14/

If you’ve read this through to the end and you have any similar frustrations, please retweet this thread. The business rates system is a noose around the neck of small business in this country and choking the economy. 15/ENDS