How a rates bill is actually built
Two numbers make your bill. The rateable value is the Valuation Office Agency’s estimate of the annual rent the property would fetch on the open market, and it was reset on 1 April 2026 on rental values as at 1 April 2024. The multiplier is pence in the pound, set by government. Multiply them together and you have the bill before any relief.
From April 2026 there are five multipliers rather than two: 38.2p and 43p for retail, hospitality and leisure property below and above a £51,000 rateable value, 43.2p and 48p for everything else, and 50.8p for any property at £500,000 or more whatever it is used for.
You are on the right side of the retail line
From 1 April 2026 the government replaced the annual retail, hospitality and leisure relief scheme with two permanently lower multipliers — 38.2p below a £51,000 rateable value and 43p above it, each 5p under the ordinary rate. An optician’s shop is qualifying retail: you are selling goods to the public from the premises, and the guidance lists opticians specifically.
The permanence is the part worth noticing. The old scheme was a discount announced each Budget with a cash cap per business, so it could shrink or vanish. The multipliers do not expire and there is no cap to hit, which finally makes a rates figure something you can put in a three-year forecast.
The test is the use of the property, not the trade of the business. A practice on a high street parade qualifies. A domiciliary-only operation run from an office or a unit on an industrial estate is a different question, because nobody is buying anything there — and so is a separate lab or glazing unit assessed as its own hereditament.
Small business rate relief is the one that matters most
Below a £12,000 rateable value there is nothing to pay. Between £12,000 and £15,000 relief tapers away in a straight line. Above £15,000 there is none. It applies to one property, with narrow exceptions for additional properties under £2,899 rateable value where the total stays under £20,000, or £28,000 in London — and if you took on a second property you keep relief on the first for twelve months, extended to thirty-six months where it was taken on from 27 November 2025.
Relief is not always applied automatically. If you believe you qualify and you are being billed, apply to the billing authority; it can usually be backdated.
The bit that catches optical practices
Your rateable value moved on 1 April 2026, and for high street retail the 2026 list has shifted values around considerably depending on the town. Check the Valuation Office Agency listing rather than assuming last year’s figure carried over.
If you have a test room extension or a converted stockroom that was never reflected in the assessment, that cuts both ways — and an assessment that is simply wrong is a Check, Challenge and Appeal case, not something to absorb.
If the assessment looks wrong
The rateable value is challengeable through the Check, Challenge and Appeal process, and the ground is that the valuation does not reflect the property. Floor areas measured wrongly, space you no longer occupy, or a layout from before the last refit are all ordinary reasons. Rates agents will cold-call you offering to do this on a contingent fee; some are good and some are not, and the ones that ask for money up front are not.