Background
On 21 March, the Minister of Finance and Personnel along with his Department for Social Development counterpart launched a discussion paper on the future of small business rate relief scheme.
The Departments are seeking views on alternatives to small business rate relief, with a particular focus on town centres. The discussion period ended on 13 May 2016.
The Department has now published a report and the consultation responses from the exercise and these can now be accessed at the links above.
As Ministers have still not been appointed to the Northern Ireland Executive following the March elections, the Department extended the existing scheme for 2017-18 to ensure that the relief was applied automatically to the rate bills of qualifying ratepayers as normal.