Storey announces regional rate freeze
Finance Minister Mervyn Storey MLA has announced a continuation of the real terms regional rate freeze for 2016-17.
The Assembly approved the Regional Rates Order 2016, which fixes the amounts of the regional domestic and non-domestic poundage used for the next financial year. For 2016-17, both the domestic and non-domestic regional rate will be frozen by uplifting it only in line with inflation by 1.7 percent.
Mr Storey said: “By freezing the regional rate in real terms for the sixth year in a row, the Executive aims to strike a balance between the needs of ratepayers during challenging economic times, and ensuring that public finances are sufficient to cover priorities we have set ourselves.”