All too rare good news this week in that Dorset has been granted around £3m under the Growth Fund scheme to support rural businesses.

The money, which will be channelled through the LEP, is due to be divided among projects which support food processing, tourism and business development – supporting the Government’s intention to support growth in the rural economy.

Interestingly, it follows close on the heels of the publication of the Government’s new Industrial Strategy which is currently out for consultation and which promises to address the uneven distribution of opportunity and growth across the country.

Well let us hope so, because when this strategy was at the conceptual stage – as recently as last year’s Autumn statement -  there were serious concerns that the vast majority of the business growth policies, then at the heart of Government thinking, focused on towns and cities but ignored rural businesses.

Never has it been more important to address the imbalance of investment in our countryside than it is now and the Government’s new Industrial Strategy must provide support for rural businesses in a pro-active and meaningful way if ministers really do want to ensure the promise of opportunity and growth, spread evenly across the country, is met.

But there’s a big black cloud on the horizon which demands a healthy injection of inter-departmental joined up thinking – because rural businesses are under serious and imminent threat from an unprecedented hike in tax bills brought about by a seriously flawed, clumsy and unfair, rating system that is in urgent need of review.

From April, thousands of businesses will face dramatic increases in their rates bill – some furnished holiday lets are facing genuinely terrifying increases – and, whatever the rationale, the reality is that the problem has been exacerbated by a politically motivated decision taken in 2015 to delay revaluation.

So far, Ministers appear to have turned a deaf ear to this problem and, quite simply, that’s not good enough. If all the messages they are sending out about supporting the rural economy are to have any credibility, urgent action is needed to defuse this looming crisis -action which should be set out as early as the Budget on 8 March.   

The CLA has written to the Treasury with a plan to reduce the potentially catastrophic rates hike that many businesses are now facing - and prevent such a damaging situation from ever happening again.

First and foremost the Government should ensure that valuations are accurate and based on local circumstances - not on regionally estimated benchmarks. There are other key points, such as ensuring that businesses which were exempt under the 2016 Small Business Rate Relief should remain exempt under the 2017 scheme - even if their new value has taken them over the threshold.

There is also a rather arbitrary discrimination which excludes many small rural businesses from qualification for 100% rate relief simply because their business includes more than one property – why?

Many of the businesses worst affected by the new rates hike – such as livestock markets, self catering accommodation, golf courses and events locations – currently have to pay the cost of any appeal simply because they fall within a ‘scheme” valuation rather than an individual valuation. That is a system which should be scrapped.

Again, where business properties are unoccupied, the owner is currently required to pay the rates bill. The grace period is short - three months for commercial buildings and six months for industrial. Grace periods in rural areas should be extended to a minimum of two years to reflect the slower uptake of new property in rural areas.

Next week’s budget offers the Government an opportunity to deliver actions rather than just words – interesting times!