Membership of any proposed combined authority is a matter for local discretion. There is no compulsion for any local authority to join such a locally-led partnership.

The governance structure of a combined authority would need to be agreed by its potential members, and it would need to meet the necessary statutory tests. It would then be for Parliament to approve any necessary legislative order establishing such an authority.

Details of the amount of non-domestic rates that were collected in (a) Worcester and (b) Worcestershire in each of the last 5 years are shown in the table below. The data are the amount that was collected in the year, irrespective of the year to which it relates before the deduction of any allowances for the cost of collection or losses in collection.

The data for Worcestershire is made up from the data for Bromsgrove, Malvern Hills, Redditch, Wychavon, Wyre Forest and Worcester.

Data were collected on auditor certified national non-domestic rates (NNDR3) outturn forms completed annually by all billing authorities in England.

These figures will reflect changes to the overall size and valuation of hereditaments, new buildings and the change in the multiplier, as well as changes to different types of rate relief.

These data are available on the gov.uk website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/national-non-domestic-rates-local-authority-level-data

The Chancellor announced at the 2014 Autumn Statement an extra £650 million of support for 2015-16 business rates bills, bringing the total support from 2013 and 2014 Autumn Statement polices in 2015-16 to £1.4 billion. Autumn Statement 2014 help includes:

• doubling small business rate relief for a further year. In England, this means an estimated 385,000 properties will pay no rates at all, while a further 190,000 properties will benefit from tapered relief.
• a 2% cap on the increase of the small business rates multiplier. This is a continuation of the 2% cap introduced in 2014-15 as part of Autumn Statement 2013 measures;
• increasing the temporary £1,000 discount for shops, pubs and restaurants with rateable values below £50,000 to £1,500 for 2015-16, benefitting an estimated 300,000 properties in England and;
• extending the existing transitional relief scheme for two years for properties with a rateable value up to and including £50,000.

These policies are in addition to previous Autumn Statement measures that continue into 2015-16, including:

• a 50 per cent discount for 18 months to new occupants of vacant shops;
• allowing businesses to keep their small business rate relief for a year where they take on an additional property; and
• business rates relief for empty new builds.

Central Government also now funds 50% of any local discount granted.

The attached table shows the number of properties in 2014-15 within the Worcester City Council boundary that have benefitted from business rates measures in the previous Autumn Statement, including those that have received small business rates relief and the high street discount on business rates.

Statistics on house building completions in each local authority district, Worcestershire and England are published in the Department's live tables 253 (annual) and 253a (quarterly), which are available at the following link:

http://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building