2026 Business Rates Revaluation: Key Findings

Here is something we did not expect to find. A typical industrial unit in Frome, Somerset is now valued higher for business rates purposes than a typical industrial unit in Manchester. Based on our assessment of the commercial rating market, the median rateable value for an industrial unit in Frome sits at around £12,500 in the 2026 list. In Manchester, we believe it to be closer to £9,900.

That single comparison tells you something important about this revaluation: the pain is not falling where most people assume it would.

The headline numbers are well known by now. What has received less attention is what they actually mean at ground level - which occupiers are hurting most, and where. Based on our analysis of commercial rating data, we think the picture looks considerably more uneven than the national averages suggest.

The national picture

Our assessment is that total rateable value across England and Wales rose by around 20% between the 2023 and 2026 lists. We believe roughly 85% of properties saw some increase, with only around 10% seeing any decrease at all.

But averages obscure as much as they reveal. The mean increase is something like 20%. The median - what the typical occupier actually experienced - looks closer to 15%. That gap matters, because it means a relatively small number of properties with very large increases are pulling the average up. If you are comparing your bill to the headline figure and finding it worse, you may well be right: most businesses did not see anything like 20%.

Around 100,000 businesses may have lost their relief entirely

The figure that deserves more attention: we estimate that roughly 100,000 commercial properties crossed the £15,000 rateable value threshold between the two lists. These are businesses that previously qualified for full Small Business Rate Relief - meaning they paid nothing - and likely no longer do.

Their bills did not simply go up by some percentage. They went from zero to a full rates liability. For a property that moved from £14,000 to £16,500, the rates bill went from nothing to roughly £7,100 a year. That is not a marginal change.

If that estimate is broadly right, the breakdown by sector looks something like this: retail taking the largest share, followed by industrial and office properties. A further 40,000 or so may have crossed the £51,000 threshold, moving from the small business multiplier band into the standard rate - a double hit of a higher rateable value and a higher multiplier applied to it.

Sector by sector

The sector averages tell one story. The distribution within each sector tells another.

Hospitality, we believe, took the highest average hit - somewhere around 25% mean but closer to 15% median. That seven to ten point gap is significant. Industrial looks similar in shape.

Retail is the most interesting case. We think the mean increase sits around 20%, but the median is closer to 15% - the widest gap of any sector. This means retail's headline figure is being dragged up by a smaller number of properties with very large increases. The typical retail occupier fared considerably better than the sector average suggests.

That nuance matters, because a meaningful proportion of retail properties - we think around 10% - actually saw their rateable value fall. That is the highest rate of decreases of any sector.

Our estimate for the proportion of each sector that saw an increase of more than 40%: retail around 15%, industrial around 15%, offices around 10%, leisure around 10%, hospitality under 10%, healthcare under 5%.

Where it hit hardest - and where it barely registered

The variation by area is striking, and in some cases hard to explain without looking closely at local rental markets.

At the top end of our estimates, towns like Henfield and Faringdon may have seen average increases of 65% to 75% or more. These are not major commercial centres. They are smaller towns where specific market conditions appear to have produced outsized valuation swings.

At the lower end, places like Felixstowe look like they came through with average increases of around 5%. The difference between those two scenarios for an occupier with a similar prior bill is significant - one might be paying 75% more, the other barely anything.

The regional picture adds a further wrinkle. The South West and North East appear, in our assessment, to be simultaneously among the highest-uplift and highest-decrease regions. Both seem to have a significant proportion of properties that went up considerably and a proportion that went down. These look like high-variance markets rather than uniformly rising ones, which means the experience of a business in one town can be entirely different from one twenty miles away.

Offices: the counterintuitive finding

Offices are often assumed to be the large-floor, corporate end of the market. Our analysis suggests that assumption does not hold when it comes to who is taking the hardest proportional hit.

Looking at office properties by size band, we believe the pattern actually reverses. Smaller offices - those under £15,000 rateable value - may have seen mean increases of close to 20%. Larger offices above £500,000 look more like 15%. Smaller occupiers are being hit harder, proportionally, than big ones.

By region, the North East and London appear to be the most affected areas for office occupiers, with a meaningful proportion seeing increases above 40% in both cases.

What this means in practice

This is not a uniform story of everything going up by roughly a fifth. It is a story of substantial variation - by sector, by region, by size of property, and by specific local market conditions.

The businesses most exposed, in our view, are those that have crossed a relief threshold, those in sectors or areas with high variance, and those in smaller properties where proportional increases appear steeper.

Many of those will, we believe, be paying more than they should. Valuations are assessments, not certainties, and some of the sharpest increases are likely to be challengeable.

The Check, Challenge, Appeal process is open now. If you think your 2026 rateable value looks high relative to what a tenant would have paid to rent your property at April 2024, it is worth getting a specialist opinion.

This article reflects Rating Matters' analysis of and views on the commercial rating market. Figures are rounded and represent estimates rather than precise calculations. Individual property circumstances vary.

If you think your 2026 rateable value may be incorrect, use our free calculator or get in touch.