Why Edinburgh businesses are celebrating a narrow escape – John McLellan

Devolving business rates to local councils would have been a disaster for Edinburgh under the city’s current administration, writes John McLellan.

Andrew McRae of the Federation of Small Businesses

Edinburgh businesses shouldn’t just breathe a sigh of relief but pop the Prosecco after MSPs rejected a Green Party bid to give councils the power to set business rates.

It might have worked in places like Aberdeenshire where business is valued, but with an SNP-Labour coalition in Edinburgh, which regards the business community as cash cows at best and at worst obstinate opponents of their ambitions, it could have been ruinous.

I’ve lost count of the number of business people I’ve met who have come away from encounters with the city’s political leaders shaking their heads at the lack of understanding or empathy, and there is little doubt in my mind that hiking business rates would have been the first choice in the hunt for more revenue to fund their schemes.

The risk to jobs would have been dismissed as scaremongering, so no wonder Andrew McRae, the Scottish policy chair of the Federation of Small Businesses who also runs the ‘Harry Potter’ shops in the Old Town and a Newington café, estimated rates bills could have gone up by over £7000 and congratulated MSPs for “recognising this threat and acting decisively to address it”.

The principle of local authorities having more control over local business rates seems fine in principle if those making the decisions had a grasp of the consequences of their actions, but the Edinburgh coalition would have just totted up the votes and wondered why the whole city was left with nothing but charity shops.

John McLellan is the Conservative councillors for Craigentinny/Duddingston