FOR Cardiff has welcomed plans to permanently reduce business rates for eligible hospitality, leisure and visitor accommodation businesses, estimating that just over 100 businesses within the Cardiff Business Improvement District could benefit.
Business Improvement District (BID) says permanent support will provide valuable certainty, but warns rates remain a significant pressure for businesses above £51k threshold
The Welsh Government has announced that, from 1 April 2027, eligible properties with a rateable value below £51K will receive a 30% reduction in their non-domestic rates bills.
The expanded support will apply to businesses including pubs, restaurants, cafés, bars, licensed clubs, live music venues, hotels, guest houses, cinemas, theatres and gyms. Retail businesses will continue to benefit from the lower multiplier already in place.
Based on an initial analysis of its membership data, FOR Cardiff estimates that more than 100 of the 960 businesses within the current BID area could qualify under the expanded hospitality, leisure and visitor accommodation categories, but will ultimately depend on individual property classifications, rateable values and the detailed regulations brought forward by the Welsh Government.
The permanent reduction will replace the temporary 15% relief currently available to food and drink hospitality businesses in Wales. FOR Cardiff says the move should therefore be viewed as welcome additional support and an important source of longer-term certainty, rather than a complete answer to the financial pressures facing the sector.
Using the current multiplier as an illustration, a business with a rateable value of £50,000 would ordinarily receive an annual business-rates bill of around £28,400. A 30% reduction would save it approximately £8,500 a year, reducing its bill to around £19,900. For a hospitality business already receiving the current temporary 15% relief, the additional saving would be approximately £4,250 a year.
The precise value of the saving will depend on the final multipliers for 2027–28, which have not yet been confirmed.
Carolyn Brownell, Executive Director of FOR Cardiff, said:
“This is meaningful and welcome support for the hospitality and leisure and visitor businesses that play such an important role in Cardiff city centre. The permanence of the reduction is particularly significant. Businesses cannot plan, recruit or invest confidently when vital support changes from one year to the next, so providing greater certainty from April 2027 is a positive step.”
“We must also keep the scale of the announcement in perspective. The additional saving for businesses currently receiving 15% hospitality relief will be valuable, but it will not remove the considerable pressures created by wages, energy, supplies and other operating costs.
“The £51,000 threshold also means that some of Cardiff's larger hospitality, leisure and cultural venues will remain outside the expanded support altogether. We therefore welcome this announcement while continuing to call for a business-rates system that supports businesses of every size and reflects the cost and reality of trading in a major city centre.”
Becca Thomas owns Bacareto, a wine bar on Church Street in Cardiff city centre. She said
“The news of this new, additional, and especially permanent support is heartening. Independent hospitality brings so much value and character to Cardiff City Centre, but over the past few years the increasing costs of operating have made it a case of survive, rather than thrive. We're really pleased that this feels like a meaningful step in the right direction, which we estimate will save our business around £3k a year. However, we do need to acknowledge that the whole sector is under enormous pressure – and needs further support to ensure businesses can continue to operate, build and make Cardiff the unique Capital City that it is.”
Natalie Isaac, is co-owner at Forty Four Group who manage two restaurants and a boutique hotel in the city centre. She said,
“The Welsh Government's business rates reduction is genuinely welcome news and will provide much-needed breathing space for many Welsh businesses. But the £51k threshold creates a real cliff edge that risks leaving too many businesses on the wrong side of the line.
“A rateable value of over £51k doesn't suddenly make you a big business – yet under this approach it can mean the difference between receiving valuable support and receiving nothing at all. We operate two restaurants and nine bedrooms in the city centre, and one of the sites falls just above the threshold and will receive nothing.
“We absolutely welcome the help being offered, but a hard cut-off is a blunt instrument. A tapered system would be much fairer and would avoid successful Welsh SMEs being penalised simply because their premises fall just above an arbitrary threshold.”
The changes will be funded through a small increase to the higher business-rates multiplier applying to the highest-value properties in Wales. Regulations are expected to be brought forward in autumn 2026 and, subject to Senedd approval, will take effect from 1 April 2027.
The final lower, standard and higher multipliers for 2027–28 will be confirmed as part of the Welsh Government's budget preparations following the UK Autumn Budget.
