Fingal County Council should take hit on commercial rates as businesses suffer from water shortages

Date: 30/12/2010
Posted by: Darragh

I am calling on local authorities including Fingal County Council to repay the commercial rates paid by businesses in the light of the ongoing disruption to trade arising from water shortages and outages.

The water shortages have been particularly damaging to pubs, hotels, restaurants and cafés, as well as other businesses in the catering sectors over the past week or so. In fact this spate of shortages is not the first this year for many businesses. I know Fingal County Council is are dealing with the aftermath of very extreme winter weather but there have been as a many as five trading weekends this year where some businesses in the council area have had no water or a shortage of water.

Businesses paying commercial rates are entitled to expect more from their local authority. In light of the seriousness of the current trading conditions facing businesses I want Fingal County Council to put in place a process for businesses to claim back part of their commercial rates.

If businesses can demonstrate to their local authority that their trade has been adversely affected as a result of the water shortages or a water outage they should be able to claim part of their rates back. Alternatively the local authority could, by agreement, offset the losses against commercial rates to be paid in the future.

This is an appropriate response to the losses suffered by businesses and Fingal County Council should be doing more to acknowledge the extent of the problem and step up to the plate.