What changed on 1 April 2026?
The 2026 revaluation took effect across England and Wales, with new rateable values based on open market rental values as at 1 April 2024. England moved from two multipliers to five, including a supplementary multiplier applying to higher value properties.
For most occupiers the practical outcome is a reset fixed cost that now runs to the next revaluation. It is not a cost that responds to how the space is used.
Why the timing matters
Because the valuation date sits at a point when office rents in many markets had recovered, while occupancy patterns had not returned to the level the space was originally sized for.
The result is a portfolio cost structure calibrated to a way of working that has changed. That is not a failure of planning. Lease terms run for a decade or more, and no reasonable forecast made in 2018 anticipated the pattern that settled after 2021.
Why cost per square metre is the wrong measure
Cost per square metre tells you what space costs. It does not tell you what the space is doing.
The measure that supports a decision is total occupancy cost against productive use: rent, rates, service charge, facilities, energy, and amortised fit-out, set against the space actually being used to do work. Portfolios that look efficient per square metre frequently look very different per used workstation.
Assembling that figure is harder than it sounds, because the components sit in lease databases, finance systems, and local building records that were never designed to be read together.
What makes consolidation cases fail?
Understating the cost of moving. A consolidation case that compares the run rate of two buildings against one is incomplete without fit-out, dilapidations, residual lease liability, and the productivity cost of the move itself.
Fit-out in particular has risen sharply, and in prime markets it can represent a substantial capital commitment against a saving that accrues over years. A case that ignores it will not survive a finance review.
What to do with the reset
Treat it as a prompt to establish the numbers rather than as a cost to absorb quietly. Establish total occupancy cost consistently across the portfolio. Measure how space is genuinely used, site by site. Model consolidation with exit costs priced in. Then connect the result to the measures the board already uses.
Property decisions that are framed in EBITDA and return on capital employed get discussed at the right level. Framed in square metres, they stay in the facilities budget.
Frequently asked questions
- When did the 2026 business rates revaluation take effect?
- On 1 April 2026 in England and Wales, with new rateable values based on open market rental values as at 1 April 2024.
- How long do the new rateable values last?
- Until the next revaluation. The reset therefore fixes a substantial element of property cost across several financial years.
- What is total occupancy cost?
- The full cost of holding and operating space, typically including rent, business rates, service charge, facilities management, energy, and amortised fit-out, rather than rent alone.
- Why measure cost per workstation rather than per square metre?
- Because cost per square metre measures the space, while cost per productive workstation measures what the organisation gets for the cost, which is the comparison a consolidation decision needs.
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