- the occupier
- their lease or rent
- the property.
VOA shares details of business rate valuation plans
The Valuation Office Agency has published details about how it will improve the information it discloses on business rates valuations.
This means that by 2026 ratepayers will be able to see more tailored information about their property, and by 2029, they’ll will be able to see more specific valuation information and evidence.
Carolyn Bartlett, the VOA’s Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, said: “We understand the importance of greater transparency in business rates valuations. The consultation showed there are different views about what property valuation information should be disclosed.
“We’ve balanced the desire for greater transparency from some with the concerns of others about the confidentiality of their data and a preference for simplified information.”
This is all part of a wider set of changes are coming to business rates in England and Wales from 2026 to 2029. These changes are being introduced in stages. They will support the VOA to deliver more frequent property revaluations.
The changes include a new duty on ratepayers to provide information about their property to the VOA.
The new information duty on ratepayers is expected to be introduced after 1 April 2026. It will be tested with small numbers of customers in phases from that point so we can make sure the system works for all ratepayers.
The duty will then be formally activated and mandated for everyone by 1 April 2029.
There is no action you need to take now. We will tell you about the changes and when you will be affected.
The new duty means ratepayers will have to tell the VOA within 60 days when there are changes to their property. These include changes to:
New Lincoln housing development wins praise from police
Police have praised the design of a new housing development in Lincoln, saying it will help to reduce the risk of crime and improve peace of mind for local residents.
Hermit Mews has achieved Secured by Design Gold standard in recognition of the high-quality security measures it incorporates.
Secured by Design is a police-backed initiative that promotes security and crime prevention in new developments. The Gold standard is its highest level, requiring stringent adherence to security principles.
Hermit Mews was designed and built by Lindum Group on behalf of City of Lincoln Council. A former garage site in Lincoln’s Hermit Street was transformed, with the existing garage block and garages adjacent to the flats demolished.
Lindum Design Manager, Mark King, said his team had worked in conjunction with Lincolnshire Police to achieve the standard: “Achieving Secured by Design Gold standard at Hermit Street required us to build homes that were not only aesthetically pleasing but also prioritised the safety and well-being of the community.
“Examples of this include a new secure fence line to the rear of Portland Street which closes off public access through to alleyways and creates dedicated private access routes for residents.
“We also reorganised the CCTV to provide more comprehensive coverage and installed motion-sensitive lighting, which reduces the kind of dimly lit areas which might attract anti-social behaviour.”
Lincoln company celebrate new year with renewal of Royal Warrant
Lincolnshire-based lubricant and paint manufacturer the Witham Group has been granted a renewed Royal Warrant of Appointment as suppliers to the King.
Group MD Nigel R Bottom said: “We are immensely proud to have this Royal Warrant granted by His Majesty. This recognition is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our entire team. We are committed to continuing to serve all our customers with the utmost care and professionalism, and we are honoured to continue our association with the Royal Household and Royal Estates.”
Witham Group was first granted a Royal Warrant to The Queen in 1991. The Appointment was the start of a journey which has culminated in the company supplying lubricants and paints for the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, as well as other connected properties, estates and farmland.
The Witham Group is one of the UK’s largest independent lubricant manufacturers and paint suppliers. It is a privately owned, family run business with its head office and lubricant manufacturing site based in Lincoln and a distribution warehouse, trade shop and paint decorating centre based in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
Witham Group makes around 5,000,000 litres of lubricants and paint every year, and a litre of its products is sold somewhere within the UK every six seconds.
German family firm invests in hydrogen generation with South Yorkshire company
ITM Power has signed a contract to supply three of its NEPTUNE V hydrogen generation units, totalling 15MW, to a family-owned private German company.
The NEPTUNE V units will be build in Sheffield and deployed into three individual projects, with the first delivery expected in the first half of 2026. The electrolysers will provide green hydrogen to refuelling stations in Germany.
ITM Power CEO Dennis Schulz said: “We are establishing ourselves as the go-to partner for down-to-earth industrial companies and family businesses, for whom it matters that their plants work reliably, safely and efficiently. We are pleased to have signed yet another NEPTUNE V contract in just a few weeks. Customer interest continues to exceed our expectations.”
Launched in May this year, NEPTUNE V is ideally suited for mid-sized projects. It utilises ITM’s leading and proven TRIDENT stack technology. NEPTUNE V is our full-scope 5MW containerised electrolyser plant. It provides reliable, flexible, and highly efficient hydrogen production capacity and the industry’s smallest footprint per MW.
Investment adviser joins Airlander team
Investment advisor Jean-Michel Deligny has joined the Hybrid Air Vehicles Advisory Board to play a key role, providing fresh insight and supporting the company’s onward financing strategy for its Airlander 10 production programme, which will happen at a site in South Yorkshire.
He said: “As an aerospace fan, I have been looking at the airship industry for the past 30 years, and none of the Lighter-Than-Air attempts have been successful. The main reason is that they are expensive, delicate, and require considerable infrastructure on the ground.
“HAV is a complete departure from LTA and provides the breakthrough the industry has been waiting for: comparatively inexpensive, robust, and flying from anywhere. To cap it all, HAV has a proven product which has already flown many times. Combined with the urgent need for aviation decarbonization, I believe HAV is ready for prime time.
“The $2+bn worth of options and $10+bn pipeline, both civil and military, is a testament of the pent-up demand. Huge market, proven product, considerable momentum – that’s the sort of company investors want to invest in. I am delighted to bring my financing expertise to accelerate the company’s success.”
NFU President reflects on a ‘wretched year’ for farming
UK farmers face a stark picture of the challenges faced by UK farming after a stitched year in he industry, says NFU President Tom Bradshaw.
He says volatile input costs, commodity prices at record levels in some farming sectors and on the floor in others, a reduction in direct payments and one of the wettest periods in decades that resulted in a disastrous harvest, have left their mark and many farming businesses worse off.
“To cap a wretched year, we saw a Labour government, which, after 14 years in opposition, promised to reset its relations with British farmers and deliver a much-needed lift to farmer confidence. Instead, it delivered an inflationary Budget and all but removed the tax reliefs for agriculture property and business property.
In all my years in the industry, I’ve never experienced the anger, despair and sense of betrayal following the Chancellor’s announcement to changes to inheritance tax, which has long protected farming’s ability to pass on the farm business to the next generation, thereby protecting food producing businesses and the nation’s food security.”
He said these raw emotions had played out at fermers’ mass lobby of MPs in Westminster, the farmer rally in Whitehall, and at the various tractor protests in London and around the UK, with tens of thousands of farmers passionately expressing how this tax will devastate their businesses, families, rural communities and national food security.
“Ultimately, this needs to be sorted out by the Prime Minister and Chancellor Rachel Reeves with a solution that will mitigate the extreme human impacts of this indefensible family farm tax policy on the current holders of those businesses, for whom, up until 30 October, the best tax advice was to hold their farm until death. Rest assured, we will keep fighting to find a solution.”
Private sector predicts fall in activity in next three months, says CBI
Private sector firms expect activity to fall in the three months to March, according to the CBI’s latest Growth Indicator, which shows expectations are at their weakest in more than two years.
This pessimism was shared across all sub-sectors. Business volumes in the services sector are anticipated to decline (-18%), driven by predicted falls in both business and professional services (-13%) and consumer services (-37%). Distribution sales are expected to fall steeply (-35%), and manufacturers also anticipate output to fall (-31%), with expectations at their weakest since May 2020.
The disappointing outlook comes as private sector activity fell again in the three months to December, at a faster pace than in the three months to November (-21% from -13% in November). Activity has been flat or falling since August 2022.
Alpesh Paleja, CBI Interim Deputy Chief Economist, said: “There is little festive cheer in our latest surveys, which suggest that the economy is headed for the worst of all worlds – firms expect to reduce both output and hiring, and price growth expectations are getting firmer. Businesses continue to cite the impact of measures announced in the Budget – particularly the rise in employer NICs – exacerbating an already tepid demand environment.
“As we head into 2025, firms are looking to the government to boost confidence and to give them a reason to invest, whether that’s long overdue moves to reform the apprenticeship levy, supporting the health of the workforce through increased occupational health incentives or a reform of business rates.
“In the longer term, businesses will be looking to the industrial strategy to provide the stability and certainty which can unlock innovation and investment – and provide that much needed growth for the economy which can deliver prosperity for firms and households alike.”
South Yorkshire company signs AI deal with Swedish manufacturer
South Yorkshire tech company IntelliAM is to launch a commercial partnership with Swedish manufacturing powerhouse SKF to drive forward the global AI revolution.
The agreement, announced this month to the Aquis Stock Exchange, is expected to see breakthrough machine learning platform created by Dinnington-based IntelliAM embedded into SKF’s products.
SKF is a leading global supplier of products, solutions and services for the reduction of friction in rotation and one of the largest public companies in the world. The company is present in around 129 countries with over 17,000 distributors and has exposure to over 40 industries.
A letter of intent between both companies will be a precursor to a partnership agreement for the provision of IntelliAM’s machine learning platform and SKF AI-ready products, for both IntelliAM and SKF sales teams.
IntelliAM, which floated earlier this year on the specialist growth market Aquis, was created on the back of years of industry knowledge and domain expertise.
Many of the world’s biggest manufacturers, including half of the world’s top ten food and drinks producers, use IntelliAM’s machine learning and AI solution to tap into billions of manufacturing data points to improve productivity.
The SKF partnership will unlock new possibilities across industry, says Tom Clayton, CEO at IntelliAM. “This marks a pivotal moment in the partnership between SKF and IntelliAM. By embedding our machine learning platform into SKF’s exceptional products, we are not only enhancing their performance but also unlocking new possibilities for industry as a whole.”
Erika Morichetto, Director SKF Lubrication Management Sales Europe, Middle East & Africa added: “Our ambition is that we can continue to grow together and explore this market with joint product and customer development, now also with the intention to extend this to include machine learning.
“We see that machine learning will provide an opportunity to enhance the connected SKF products in application and support our clients with insights for their machines or processes and improve their maintenance practices.”
The discussions between the two companies are built upon a long-term partnership. It is anticipated that detailed contractual discussions will be concluded in 2025.
Yorkshire garden centre group moves in to Huddersfield site
The former Dobbies Garden Centre Pennine in Huddersfield is to join Bradford-based Yorkshire Garden Centres Group, which also acquired the Deans Garden Centres in York and Scarborough earlier this year.
Mark Farnsworth, MD of Yorkshire Garden Centres said: “Pennine Garden Centre is well known to many of our team who used to work there when it was owned by the Armitage family. Our team are excited about returning to the centre, and we hope we can revitalise the business in the coming months. We are delighted to welcome some of the Dobbies team into the business, and we look forward to them playing their part in the refurbishment over the next few weeks. We intend to reopen the store in the early spring.”
YGC Partners, a partnership with Altia Ltd, will reopen the four-acre site, previously run by the Armitage family, who sold it to Wyevale and subsequently Dobbies, following a period of refurbishment. 17 members of the Dobbies team will join the business.
Yorkshire Garden Centres began with the acquisition of Tong Garden Centre by Mark Farnsworth and Tom Megginson in 2015. They invested £9m and have turned Tong into one of Yorkshire’s leading garden centres. The Group’s strategy is to operate destination garden centres with a compelling mix of retail, food and play for all the family. It now operates sites at Tong, Tingley, Otley, Bingley, York and Scarborough.
Sheffield clean energy company signs hydrogen generation deal with EU buyer
ITM Power has been selected as the technology provider and awarded a Front-End Engineering Design contract for a 50MW green hydrogen production site in the European Union for an undisclosed experienced green hydrogen plant developer.
The FEED will be based on ten NEPTUNE V units, our full-scope 5MW containerised electrolyser plant ideally suited for mid-sized projects. The FEED will support the project development ahead of a Final Investment Decision (FID) for the whole project, which the customer expects to take in 2025. The plant is planned to start producing approximately 5,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually from the second half of 2027 and supply local industries.
Dennis Schulz, CEO, said: “We are excited to have been selected as the technology partner for this project. NEPTUNE V was only launched in May of this year, and this FEED confirms our view at the time that mid-sized green hydrogen projects would experience strong momentum in the near term.”
