THE Government was last night accused that making money from hard-pressed businesses was its “priority”

after revealing it had no plans to reinstate full relief from Empty Property Rates (EPR).

Despite widespread calls for relief to be granted, particularly in such tough economic times, and thousands of people signing a petition on the Downing Street website, the Government yesterday said it had “no long term plans” to reverse its approach.

In a statement in response to the petition, it claimed that to grant full relief, which was offered prior to April last year, would cost the Treasury £950m and would remove incentives to quickly let or re-use commercial buildings.

The statement comes as a blow to thousands of businesses across the region being crippled by the tax, as well as to the Building on Success campaign, run by The Northern Echo with the North-East Chamber of Commerce (NECC), which calls for full relief to be reinstated.

Last night, Ross Smith, NECC head of policy and research, criticised the Government’s failure to offer any respite.

“The Government’s response lays bare their priority to raise money from hardpressed businesses with this tax, with re-use of property a secondary consideration,” he said.

“We would also dispute the fact that this tax is needed to encourage re-use of property.

Businesses want to see empty space put to use, but are being incentivised to demolish existing buildings and delay new developments.”

Under then-Chancellor Gordon Brown, full relief was abolished in the 2007 Budget and was introduced last year, since when businesses have been forced into measures such as making redundancies and demolishing buildings to survive.

Although Chancellor Alistair Darling offered full relief to properties with a rateable value for 12 months in November’s Pre-Budget Report, its claims that this would apply to 70 per cent of all premises were disproved by British Property Federation (BPF) research, which showed the statistics also included ATMs, car parking spaces and public toilets.

Speaking to The Northern Echo in April, Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said the Conservatives, too, would not be able to immediately restore full relief due to the dire state of the UK economy.

He said: “We fully realise these rates are a terrible economic impediment. However, with the state of public finances, it is not that easy just to reverse a £1bn tax increase.

“However, it will be on our agenda for change.”

But Mr Smith called on both the Government and Conservatives to look at revising EPR as a means to help businesses recover.