How is Amazon getting away without paying business rates?

Update: 1 February, 2024
On 23 January 2024, after almost a year’s delay, the Valuation Office Agency published a valuation for the DPO1 site, backdated to 1 April 2023 with no interest payable. The reason for the delay is not available.

Perhaps rather more to the point, what is Havant Borough Council doing about it?

While we’re on the subject of questions, how was it that Amazon’s massive Portsmouth area delivery station ended up in New Lane, Havant, without the direct access to the A27 and the A3(M) needed by 95% of its traffic? You might also be wondering what that multi-storey van parking structure is all about, if it isn’t just to irritate residents with the overnight floodlighting of its empty floors?

Those do seem like quite reasonable questions to Havant town residents and the team at HCS.

Nine months’ worth of business rates from the former occupant of the site, Pfizer (who paid their dues regularly and promptly) would have brought in around £585,000. While the Council don’t get to keep all of that once HMRC takes its cut, there would still have been enough left over to do some useful work in the borough.

So why is it that nine months of operation by Amazon has brought in precisely Nothing… Nowt…. Zilch… Absolutely diddly squat? We thought we’d ask the Cabinet Lead for Finance, Councillor Neil Bowdell, at this evening’s Full Council meeting.

To be fair on Amazon, its not entirely their fault, Havant Borough Council should have seen this coming. The company is simply just exploiting all the options that the shareholders of any global business would expect, only perhaps with greater effect than others.

Here are the questions posed to the Council meeting, together with a brief preamble. Click the image to read this single page document, or just take this link to watch and listen to the questions together with the responses given by the Council Leader.

It is perhaps unfortunate that Councillor Bowdell was one of just three Council members who sent apologies for absence from this evening’s full Council meeting. His more considered response might have been rather more forthcoming than the frankly evasive comments made on his behalf by the Leader.

Those of you who would like to dig a little deeper might find the following documents more helpful. HCS has raised many detailed questions on the Amazon New Lane development, both during the planning process and since the decisions were taken. Almost all of those questions have been studiously ignored.  It has only been through a long-winded process, targeting inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act, that a picture has been pieced together.

The following paper draws from the output from these inquiries. (Click the image to download and read)

The second paper serves as an appendix to the first, comprising a timeline of events. (Click the image to download and read)

Note. These two documents will remain under review with associated version control as further information comes to light. The current version is V0.3, dated 22 November 2023.