The budget's new business rates framework arrives in four months. If your company operates from an office, lab or corporate facility worth over £500,000 on the rating list, your occupancy costs will jump significantly. Understanding what's happening and preparing now could save your business thousands annually.

What Changed, and Why It Matters to Your Premises

From April 2026, the government will apply a 50.8 pence multiplier to properties valued above £500,000. This replaces the current 48 pence multiplier, creating a 2.8 pence surtax on all affected properties. For a property with a rateable value of £1 million, this means a £28,000 annual increase in your business rates bill.

The change applies to offices, laboratories, research facilities, corporate headquarters, science parks and any commercial property traded above that valuation threshold. Unlike the government's relief packages for retail, hospitality, and leisure, there's no permanent exemption for the office- or laboratory-based sectors. You face the full impact.

Timing compounds the pressure. The April 2026 rate change coincides with the government's five-yearly revaluation cycle. Properties in demand will see higher rateable values assessed against rental evidence from the past two years. Combined with the multiplier increase, occupancy costs for businesses in strong locations rise by more than the multiplier alone suggests.

Where the Pressure is Greatest

Three groups face particularly acute impacts: large office occupiers, laboratory and research facilities, and corporate headquarters with significant footprints.

Large offices matter because size creates exposure. A business occupying 100,000 square feet with a rateable value of £2 million faces a £56,000 annual rate increase. Scale makes the multiplier change material to overall business profitability.

Laboratories are structurally vulnerable. Life sciences facilities in London, Oxford and Cambridge already operate with substantial rateable values due to specialised construction requirements: precise climate control, specialist electrical infrastructure, ventilation systems and regulatory compliance apparatus. These properties cost significantly more to build and operate than standard commercial space. The budget amplifies that cost burden without acknowledging the research sector's particular exposure. Analysis suggests laboratories across the Cambridge, Oxford and London region could face £50 million in collective additional annual costs.

Corporate headquarters with dispersed geographic footprints face portfolio-level decisions. A national employer operating regional offices in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh will see cumulative impacts across all four locations. For some businesses, the cumulative increase justifies consolidation: close the smallest office, centralise operations and reduce overall exposure to the multiplier.

What You Can Do in the Next Four Months

Four concrete measures to reduce your exposure before April 2026 take effect.

Review your actual space usage. Post-pandemic working patterns show most office occupiers use significantly less space than they pay for. Map daily occupancy, identify persistently empty areas and consider consolidation. Moving from 100,000 square feet to 70,000 square feet could reduce your rateable value below £500,000, shifting you from the high-value multiplier to the standard multiplier. That saves 2.8 pence on every pound of rateable value. For laboratories, this requires care. You can't compress specialist lab space without damaging research capability. However, consolidating administrative, office and meeting space protects your research function while reducing rateable value.

Start lease renegotiations immediately. Landlords will negotiate to avoid losing tenants. If your lease expires or includes review dates coming up, use the April 2026 rate change as leverage. You have a genuine commercial advantage here. A landlord facing tenant departure loses all income. They have an incentive to negotiate lease terms, modify rent assumptions, or adjust rate pass-through clauses. Don't wait until April 2026 to negotiate. Complete discussions before the new rates take effect.

Audit your service charge arrangements. Service charges (building running costs beyond rent and rates) often hide poor value. Review contracts for cleaning, security, maintenance, facilities management, utilities and waste. Competitive tendering frequently yields 10 to 15 per cent savings. If you occupy multiple properties, bundled contracts create negotiating leverage with suppliers. If you occupy a science park or shared facility, collective tenant negotiation dramatically strengthens your position against service providers.

Reduce hidden transaction costs through modern payment infrastructure. Many office-based businesses collect recurring payments: parking subscriptions, catering charges, meeting room bookings, lab access fees or tenant occupancy payments. Each card transaction typically costs 1.5 to 3 per cent of the transaction value plus per-transaction charges. Open Banking payments eliminate card networks entirely, routing money directly between bank accounts. A serviced office collecting £150,000 annually in miscellaneous charges saves £2,250 to £4,500 per year by switching to direct bank transfers. Science parks collecting larger sums save proportionally more. Open Banking services handle compliance and security while you retain full reconciliation and reporting control. Service providers like Wonderful, GoCardless, and Adyen are some of the most popular FCA-approved payment service providers, specialising in open banking-led payment options, like QR code payment, pay by link, etc.

Beyond April 2026: What Success Looks Like

Businesses that manage the budget's impact successfully will be those that act before April 2026 takes effect, not afterwards. Once the new rates apply, your options narrow considerably. Before April, you can negotiate leases, execute relocations, consolidate space and implement cost reductions on your own timeline. After April, you'll be reacting to circumstances rather than shaping them.

The government's £4.3 billion transitional relief package over three years will help some larger properties cap their increases, but it doesn't fundamentally change the structural shift. The high-value multiplier is permanent. Properties in desirable locations face permanent cost increases. Laboratories will remain expensive to operate. The only variable you control is how thoroughly you've prepared.

Organisations that emerge strongest will combine strategic property decisions (space consolidation, lease renegotiation, and selective relocation) with operational efficiency measures (supplier contract review, digital payment systems, and energy-efficient upgrades). Neither approach alone is sufficient. Property decisions address half the problem. Operational measures address the other half. Combined, they position your business to absorb or mitigate the April 2026 impact.

Start Now

Four months sounds like reasonable notice, but it's insufficient for commercial property decisions. Lease negotiations, relocation logistics, space consolidation and supplier tendering all take time. You'll be competing for professional advisors' attention with hundreds of other companies working through identical decisions. Early action gives you better access to specialists, more landlord flexibility and more options for where to relocate if that's your choice.

The April 2026 business rates change is not a minor adjustment to accommodate. Following the UK business rates changes in the Autumn Budget 2026, this marks a structural shift in how commercial property costs will be calculated. The difference between preparing now and waiting until January 2026 could be thousands of pounds annually.