Reduce business rates

With the SNP announcement that they will devolve the setting of business rates to local councils, there is at last a chance for the council to start redressing the balance.

The SNP have claimed that the amount of business rates collected in a council area makes no difference to the total money received from Holyrood.

So with this recovered power the council could reduce the rates on the schools and leisure centres to zero and save us a tidy sum that could then be spent on wir bairns’ education.

They could reduce the rates on retail non-grocery and go a small way to redress the imbalance of Tesco on local trade. They could reduce the rates of SVT to help prevent any more than the 270 job losses currently going through, with a show of faith from us we may see the same from the oil companies till the oil price inevitably rises again.

A reduction in business rates to zero on all our industry would go some small way to negating the high cost of doing business in Shetland compared to the rest of the UK, so I urge wir council to act on this before the SNP change their minds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-34546277

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-34549816

Ali Inkster

Burra