Business Rates and Sustainability

The climate emergency requires a radical re-think of every aspect of our ways of doing things to maximise incentives for sustainable development and transformation, including reviewing tax policy.

With the built environment contributing around 40% of the UK’s total carbon footprint, any improvement that can be made to building stock will be important in achieving environmental goals. The urgency of the current situation means that now is the time to explore means of using the tax system to incentivise environmentally-desirable behaviour and investment.

In our new report, we look at how the current business rates regime is an obvious target for changes that will create financial incentives to improve UK building stock, and how the current system could be updated to drive a positive contribution to sustainability – making the tax more acceptable and fit for the 21^st century.