A pub tax review ends after the Budget. Will the Budget help pubs and shops anyway?

What happened

HM Treasury launched an independent review of business rates valuation methodology for pubs and hotels, led by Jerry Schurder, with a call for evidence closing at 11:59pm on 16 October 2026 and a report to the Treasury by the end of March 2027.

The review reports by the end of March 2027, after the Budget. Announced on 24 August, it looks at how pubs and hotels are valued for business rates, a tax on business property. Jerry Schurder leads it. It will be ready for the next revaluation, when property values are reset, and not for this Budget.

Pubs and hotels are valued on how much trade they could do, not on their floor space. Both saw big rises at the 2026 revaluation, mostly because the lower values from the pandemic years fell away. The Treasury’s own release says the current system is not felt to reflect the market.

Evidence for the review closes at 11:59pm on 16 October. Pub owners, brewers, hoteliers and valuers can send it by email. Twelve days later the Chancellor, John Healey, delivers a Budget he has confirmed for Wednesday 28 October. So any help this autumn has to come through a discount or a lower tax rate, and not through new values.

The sector is not starting from zero. On 23 July the Prime Minister announced a 20 per cent cut to bills for pubs, social clubs and live music venues in England from April 2027. It is worth an estimated £1,100 to the typical pub and reaches nearly 32,000 premises. The largest music venues are left out, and details follow at the Budget.

This comes on top of a 15 per cent relief for 2026-27 announced in January and a two-year freeze in real terms. Since April 2026, shops, hospitality and leisure properties under £500,000 have paid a multiplier, the tax charged per pound of property value, 5p below the national one. It was set in law at the November 2025 Budget.

Sources: MHCLG (2, 3, 4, 5)

The Pattern

We looked at every autumn Budget or Statement from 2015 to 2025. There were ten, with none in 2019. For each one we read the letter on business rates that the government sends councils afterwards. We asked whether it brought a new or longer rates cut for shops, hospitality, leisure or pubs in England. A general freeze or help for small firms alone does not count. The page shows the last eight and counts all ten.

The Read

History points to another measure. Seven of the last eight autumn events brought one, so business rates has become the regular hospitality item of the autumn Budget. The Treasury now says itself that pub and hotel values are wrong, while setting up a review that cannot report until five months after the Budget. Chancellors have usually filled gaps like that with a discount, and the sums are small for a Budget: the July cut is worth about £1,100 to the typical pub.

There are reasons for doubt. The sector has already been helped twice. The 5p lower multipliers arrived in April, and the 20 per cent cut is booked for April 2027 with details promised at the Budget. A Chancellor who has said the Budget will be built on fiscal discipline, meaning tight control of spending, can call that enough. Over all ten events since 2015 the count is seven of ten, and two of the seven, in 2024 and 2025, gave less help than before while presenting it as more of the same.

The one recent autumn event that left the sector out, in 2020, froze the tax for everyone and promised more later. If that happens again, the review becomes the answer to every question, and the first market resolves NO on a Budget that still mentions pubs on every page.