Yorkshire towns revealed as ratings winners

However, there are huge rises for some of the region’s biggest tourist attractions including the National Railway Museum, Flamingo Land and Castle Howard.

The biggest rise in Yorkshire was Boston Park Farm Maize Maze in Doncaster, which saw its rateable value increase by over 5,000 per cent from £500 to £25,200.

The analysis from Gerald Eve found that retailers in Huddersfield, Barnsley and Doncaster will benefit most from last week’s business rates revaluation.

Central Sheffield and York will also see drops of up to 15 per cent and Leeds retailers, outside of the Trinity shopping centre, will see rates fall by up to 30 per cent. Meanwhile, those in Hull are expecting a fall of up to 60 per cent.

However, Ilkley businesses fared much worse than many other Yorkshire towns and cities in the review.

The Valuation Office Agency published new rateable valuations for each of the 1.85 million commercial properties in England – revealing the bills for Yorkshire businesses from April 2017 onwards.

Stephen Newland, a business rates expert based at Gerald Eve’s Leeds office, said: “For struggling retailers that have been on the edge for some years, these reductions will come as blessed relief, but they also illustrate just how out-of-kilter rates bills have been, with the worst-affected firms subsidising their better-off counterparts for some time.

“They should have benefitted from lower bills 18 months ago, but the unfair postponement of the 2015 revaluation stretched their pain out for a further two years, and they have every right to question the suitability of a system that has penalised them in this way.”

Ilkley is one of only a few places in the region to see the majority of values increasing.

Bettys Café Tea Room is facing a 35 per cent rise in its rateable value - from £54,000 to £73,500 - while Ilkley Cycles is expecting an increase of up around 20 per cent, from £31,500 to £37,750.

Adam Evans, owner of Ilkley Cycles, which employs five or six staff, described the increase as ‘crippling’. He added: “The cycle retail industry is already almost unviable so an increase in our overheads like this makes it completely unviable.”

Mark Williams, from Dacres Commercial, who is advising businesses to prepare to appeal the increases, said: “The level of proposed increases are grossly unjust when compared with other popular retail destinations in the area.”

The impact of the revaluation is magnified by the Government’s controversial transitional relief proposals, under which larger properties whose values have fallen will see bills reduce by just 4.1 per cent in the first year.

Mr Newland added that the structure of the preferred transitional arrangements, with reductions phased in on a shallow trajectory, means that some stores will never see the full benefit of their decreased bills.

“That the most-struggling firms in the hardest-hit locations will never see the full benefit of their reduced liabilities makes a mockery of the Government’s approach to revaluations,” he said.

“What is the point of revaluing properties if businesses are unable to see the upside? It is yet another example of confused thinking on the part of the Government and indicative of an attitude that asks companies to pay up and shut up.”