To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate he has made of the additional net revenue raised under the new arrangements for empty property business rates in (a) 2008-09 and (b) 2009-10. (283828)

The amount of empty property relief that local authorities estimated that they will grant in 2008-09 and 2009-10 was £1,001 million and £570 million respectively, compared with £1,294 million in 2007-08.

These data are available in table 2 of the Statistics Release “National non-domestic rates to be collected by local authorities in England 2009-10” that is available on the Communities and Local Government website at

http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/localregional/localgovernmentfinance/statistics/nondomesticrates/forecast/

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate has been made of the number of non-domestic buildings which were demolished in each region in each year from 2005-06 to 2008-09; on what proportion of such buildings business rates were being paid; and what estimate he has made of the equivalent figures for each year from 2009-10 to 2011-12. (285131)

Neither the Department nor its agencies collect statistics on the number of demolitions of non-domestic properties. Nor do we make estimates of these figures for the next three years.