Non-domestic rates - money off your bill
Energy relief
Subsidy control rules under Subsidy Control Act 2022
The following reliefs will be subject to the subsidy rules under the above regulations -
- Rural relief
- Transitional relief for properties in parks
- Transitional relief for small businesses
- Day nursery relief
- District heating relief
- Renewable energy relief
- Retail, hospitality and leisure relief (2022/23 only)
These reliefs may be offered as a Minimum Financial Assistance (MFA) subsidy under the Subsidy Control Act 2022. MFA is capped at a maximum of £315,000 over a three-period – cumulated over the current and previous two financial years.
To ensure that we comply with the subsidy regime, we may be required to cap relief at the MFA maximum limit. This may depend on:
- the level of other public sector assistance received by your entity
- whether or not you have an interest in any business with other properties, is in receipt, or eligible, for one of the existing rate relief schemes
You must consider whether you have already received support from any public sector body in the current financial year and the two financial years immediately preceding this. We will determine this from the completed Subsidy Information Declaration Form that is part of your application.
A written record must be kept for at least three years beginning with the date on which the MFA was given. This will enable you to respond to future requests from public authorities on how much MFA you have received and whether you have reached the cumulative threshold.
Further information on this is available on the Scottish Government website.
You can get 50% relief where the property is used wholly or mainly for the purposes of a district heating network, distributing thermal energy in the form of steam, hot water or chilled liquids from a central source of production through a network to multiple buildings or sites. This relief will be available to 31 March 2032.
For district heating networks first entered in the valuation roll from 1 April 2021, 90% relief is available where they are powered by renewables.
From 1 April 2024, this relief is also available to district heating networks powered by renewable energy where they were entered in the valuation roll prior to 1 April 2021.
This relief will be available until 31 March 2027.
You may be able to get up to 100% relief if your scheme has arrangements in place that entitle one or more community organisations to
- at least 15% of the annual profit, or
- so much of the annual profit as is attributable to at least 0.5 megawatt of the total installed capacity of the project
To be eligible your scheme has to produce heat or power from any of the following sources
- biomass
- biofuels
- fuel cells
- photovoltaics
- water (including waves and tides, but excluding production from the pumped storage of water)
- wind
- solar power
- geothermal sources
The generation activity should take place at the eligible property itself.
How much relief you can get depends on the rateable value, as follows
- rateable value up to £145,000 can get 100% relief
- rateable value between £145,001 to £430,000 can get 50% relief
- rateable value between £430,001 to £860,000 can get 25% relief
- rateable value between £860,001 to £4 million can get 10% relief
- rateable value of more than £4 million can get 2.5% relief
If you have more than one business property, the rateable values are combined.
You can get 60% relief if
- your scheme produces heat or power from water (including waves and tides, but excluding production from the pumped storage of water), and
- has a rateable value of no more than £5 million
Submit evidence
If you have already made an application for energy relief and have been asked to provide evidence in support of your application, you can use our online form to provide this.