A tax on businesses that stay open beyond midnight has been scrapped despite opposition from the police. The Late Night Levy was introduced in 2014 and money taken from pubs, bars and shops had been used to support policing in Nottingham City Centre.
Currently 144 businesses qualify to pay the tax, which ranged from £299 a year for smaller properties to £4,440 for larger venues. An exemption was however agreed for members of the Business Improvement District (BID), which includes a large proportion of city venues, and this reduced the income from the levy to around £67,000 a year, according to Nottingham City Council.
As such the levy therefore disproportionately impacted smaller, family-run businesses in neighbourhoods outside the city centre which could not be part of the BID. The Labour-run council says 96 of the 144 businesses were based outside the city centre.
