Renewable Energy Generation Rate Relief: A Slight Relief?

Last year we commented on the change made to this relief which significantly restricted it to:

1. sites (producing heat or power from biomass, biofuels, fuel cells, photovoltaics, water, wind, solar and geothermal sources) where there are arrangements in place entitling at least one community organisation to at least: (a) 15% of its annual profit or (b) an amount of the annual profit as is attributable to 1MW of the total installed capacity of the project in respect of which reductions of between 2.5% and 100% in business rates could still be obtained depending on the rateable value (see table undernoted); and
2. new qualifying projects (i.e. those which were first entered onto the valuation roll for rates' purposes on or after 1st April 2016) which attracted a lesser reduction of 10% where the value of the relevant land is £500,000 or less and 1.5% in any other instance.