Fibre pushers get UK budget tax reprieve Businesses rolling out pure fibre in the UK are to be exempt from paying land rates over the next five years, Chancellor Philip Hammond's announced in a reprieve to providers in his Autumn Statement today. Broadband providers previously hit out against a forthcoming hike in business rates that will dramatically increase the …
BT will be all over this, then drag their heels, blame everything under the sun except themselves and Openreach (assuming it remains part of BT - otherwise it'll be blamed too) and then get additional time to roll out fibre.
Don't expect anything if you live outside a city though.
Not much point dragging it out - the biggest savings will be made the quicker the fibre is laid. They would be better served laying fibre as much as possible in year 1 as it will then get 5 years savings. Dragging it out means they will get reduced savings with a potential - but unlikely - hope they will get another tax break later on.
I have no issue with poor service to non-city areas, there's all sorts of good economic reasons why it's expensive to do and there's a certain level of acceptance that it's hard, even the nordics get that. It might even be possible that in trying to give everybody equality of access we're actually harming the network itself.
My issue and it'll continue to be my issue is we're as a country (from tax revenues) and as individuals (as customers) paying through the nose for very crappy service from very crappy networks even where the economics of FTTH/P make perfect sense purely because we keep using the worst available options for service delivery. Somebody in government needs to get a grip on the actual roll-out of decent service rather than just throwing money at it and hoping the problem goes away because it never will.
It'll take far more money than we're talking about to re-roll FTTH to countryside areas, even with somebody competent pushing it.
If you followed the link in the article you'll realise it was the VOA that wanted more. Hammond has effectively nixed that for 5 years. Unless the Chancellor of 5 years hence continues the relief the VOA can do whatever they wish on valuations to claw back what they've been deprived of today.
So to confirm - five months ago they were going to quadruple the costs, but now they aren't? It's always confused me how the eff anyone (personal or business) are supposed to do any planning when the government changes the rules so much at such short notice (and then often reverts the change).
Not sure if the Valuation Office Agency are making mistakes, following govt. policy or are just numpties, but recently they valued a bird watchers shed with no services on a nature reserve where no other building will ever be allowed and no planning permission will ever be granted for change of use to residential or office space, at something ridiculous like £12,000 so the business rates, previously about £90 would go up to £900.
Ah here it is.
Considering that the VOA boast of re-valuing nearly 2 million business properties in year, it's certainly a mainly computer based exercise and no one actually goes out and looks at these places or even contacts the owners. I'm betting that this bird hide didn't fit into a "standard" category" and someone made a wild guess on where to rank it in the great scheme of things with no consideration for the actual circumstances.
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