To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many properties owned by the Department were liable for payment of (a) business rates and (b) empty property rates in each of the last five years; and what the liability in respect of each was in each such year. (290575)

The information is as follows.

(a) In 2004-05 the Department owned five buildings liable for business rates. Since the disposal of a surplus property in 2005-06, this has reduced to four. Details of the costs for each respective year are in the following table:

(b) The Department has not owned any properties qualifying for empty rates relief in the period covered by this question.