Business rates relief cheers pubs but leaves retailers cold

Pubs and breweries across England are celebrating a targeted business rates relief package announced this week, but High Street retailers and independent shops say they’ve been deliberately shut out — and they’re furious about it.

The government confirmed that hospitality venues, including pubs, bars and live music venues, will receive a 40% discount on their business rates bills for the 2025-26 financial year, capped at £110,000 per business. For a typical town-centre pub facing a rateable value of around £30,000, that translates to a saving of roughly £7,200 annually. It’s meaningful money, and the industry knows it.

Pubs raise a glass to the announcement

The British Beer and Pub Association called it a ‘lifeline’ for an industry still carrying the weight of post-pandemic debt and energy cost spikes. Many pub operators said without some form of relief, closures that had slowed down last year would have accelerated sharply through 2025. Britain lost more than 380 pubs in the first half of 2024 alone, according to industry data.

So the relief matters. But it’s also selective in a way that’s starting to generate real resentment on the High Street.

Retailers and other firms ‘left out in the cold’

A clothes shop, a bookstore, a gift retailer — none of them qualify. The discount applies specifically to hospitality, retail and leisure businesses, but only those with a rateable value below a certain threshold, and the way the eligibility criteria have been drawn means many mid-sized independent retailers fall outside the bracket entirely.

The British Retail Consortium said its members were ‘baffled’ by the logic. Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the organisation, put it bluntly: ‘Retailers are facing exactly the same cost pressures as the pub round the corner, but they won’t see a penny of this relief.’

That sentiment is echoed up and down the country. In Shrewsbury, one independent gift shop owner told local media she’d been waiting months to hear whether any support was coming. When the announcement landed, her business wasn’t on the list.

A two-speed High Street

What’s emerging is effectively a two-tier system. Pubs get a cushion. Dry goods retailers, hair salons operating above the threshold, and certain leisure businesses don’t.

The government has pointed to the broader freeze on the small business rates multiplier as evidence that support is being spread wider than critics suggest. And technically, that’s true. But a freeze isn’t the same as a discount, and many business owners know the difference.

Still, for those who do qualify, the relief is genuinely welcome and shouldn’t be dismissed.

What happens next

The current relief package runs through to April 2026, when a full business rates revaluation is due to take effect. Ministers have said the revaluation will better reflect current property market conditions. Whether that ends up helping or hurting High Street firms depends entirely on how those new rateable values land.

For now, the pubs are pouring. Everyone else is waiting.