Northern Ireland paused its rates revaluation. Your bill went up anyway.

If you run or are buying a practice in Northern Ireland, you have probably seen two pieces of news that seem to contradict each other: a revaluation of every business property in the country was paused in January, and your rates bill for 2026/27 still went up. Both are true, and the gap between them is worth understanding, because it is not a one-off — it affects what you should check on this year's bill, and what to watch for whenever the paused revaluation eventually lands.

Land & Property Services calls the exercise Reval2026: a rewrite of every Net Annual Value (NAV) in Northern Ireland — the NI equivalent of England's rateable value — based on rental evidence as of 1 April 2024, replacing a list that was itself based on October 2021 rents. It would have been the first revaluation since 2023. It has not happened.

What actually happened

LPS published the draft Reval2026 valuation list on 22 January 2026, covering more than 75,000 non-domestic properties. Across all sectors the draft showed an average increase of roughly 15% in value, but that average hid a very uneven split: offices and retail rose by around 9%, industrial and warehousing by around 16%, and parts of hospitality — hotels in particular — faced individual increases reported as high as 80% or more, on top of the withdrawal of pandemic-era rate relief. Hospitality Ulster and the Northern Ireland Hotels Federation called it unworkable for a sector still absorbing higher energy and food costs.

One week later, on 29 January 2026, the Finance Minister, John O'Dowd, announced an immediate pause to the whole process. He said he had "listened carefully" to the concerns raised, and suggested that restarting might depend on the outcome of a separate review under way in England into the same style of valuation formula LPS had used for hospitality. As of the most recent public update, the pause still stands: the Department of Finance's own Reval2026 page says it will be updated "when the next steps are confirmed," and no restart date has been announced.

What's actually on your 2026/27 bill

Because the revaluation never took effect, your practice's NAV for 2026/27 is the same figure it was for 2025/26 — the list LPS has used since Reval2023, built on rental evidence from October 2021. What did change is the poundage: the rate per pound of NAV that gets multiplied by your valuation to produce the bill, and this is set independently of the revaluation. The Executive raised the non-domestic regional rate by 3.0%, from 29.89p to 30.79p in the pound, under the Rates (Regional Rates) Order (Northern Ireland) 2026. On top of that, your district council sets its own district rate; Belfast City Council agreed a 4.48% increase for 2026/27. Put the two together and a Belfast practice's total non-domestic poundage rose from 0.626592 to 0.650288 — a 3.78% increase applied to an unchanged valuation. The other ten councils set their own district rate separately, so the exact percentage differs outside Belfast, but the mechanism — same NAV, higher poundage — is identical everywhere in Northern Ireland this year.

Two practices, same valuation, a higher bill either way

Take an illustrative small surgery with an NAV of £14,000 — inside the band that gets 20% Small Business Rate Relief automatically, with no application needed. In 2025/26 the gross bill was £14,000 × 0.626592 = £8,772.29, reduced by 20% relief to a net £7,017.83. For 2026/27 the NAV is still £14,000 — nothing about the revaluation reached this property — but at the new poundage the gross bill is £14,000 × 0.650288 = £9,104.03, and after the same 20% relief the net bill is £7,283.23. That is £265.40 more, a 3.78% rise, entirely from the poundage and nothing from the valuation.

Now take an illustrative practice above the relief ceiling, NAV £28,000, no Small Business Rate Relief either year. 2025/26: £28,000 × 0.626592 = £17,544.58. 2026/27: £28,000 × 0.650288 = £18,208.06. The increase is £663.48, again 3.78%, because the relief tiers themselves did not move and neither property's valuation did. Whatever your NAV, this year's increase is a pure poundage story — which also means it is the one part of the bill you can check in two minutes against last year's statement, without needing to know anything about Reval2026 at all.

Why this isn't actually over

A paused revaluation is not a cancelled one. LPS's draft Reval2026 figures were published before the pause and, as of writing, are still searchable by postcode on the Department of Finance's valuation service — which matters for two different people. If you own a practice, it is worth looking up your own premises now, purely so a future bill is not a surprise: the draft figure is the best public indication of where your NAV is likely to land whenever the process restarts, even though it carries no legal weight today and could still change before any new list is actually adopted. If you are buying a practice, the draft Reval2026 NAV for the premises is worth asking for alongside the current one during due diligence, because the seller's 2026/27 rates bill tells you nothing about what the same premises could cost to occupy once the pause lifts — and dental surgeries have not been reported as a sector LPS singled out for the kind of sharp increases hitting hospitality, but nobody has published a dental-specific figure, so checking your own premises is the only way to know.

There is also no guarantee the eventual restart will look like the version that got paused. The Minister tied Northern Ireland's next move to a parallel review in England of the same valuation approach, and NI operates no transitional relief scheme of its own to phase in large increases the way England, Scotland and Wales each do for their own revaluations — so whatever lands, and whenever it lands, is worth taking seriously rather than assuming it will be cushioned.

What to do this week

1. Check your 2026/27 rates bill against last year's. The NAV line should be identical; only the amount calculated from it should have moved, by the poundage increase for your council — 3.78% in Belfast, a different figure elsewhere.
2. Confirm Small Business Rate Relief is still showing, if your NAV sits at or below £15,000. It is automatic, but automatic systems still produce the occasional wrong bill, and the relief tiers are unchanged this year.
3. Look up your premises' draft Reval2026 valuation on the LPS valuation service by postcode, so you know the direction of travel before it becomes a bill rather than after.
4. If you are buying a practice in Northern Ireland, ask for both the current NAV and the draft Reval2026 figure for the premises, and price the gap between them into how you think about occupancy costs going forward.
5. Do not assume a future increase will be phased in. Without a transitional relief scheme in Northern Ireland, whatever NAV eventually replaces the current one applies to the bill in full from year one.

None of this touches NHS contract values, goodwill or equipment — only the rates line on your occupancy costs, which is easy to overlook precisely because nothing about it looks unusual this year. If you are weighing up a purchase, our guide to buying a dental practice, step by step covers where premises costs sit in the wider due diligence. Practices anywhere in Northern Ireland are welcome to get in touch directly — see our page for dental accountants in Belfast — and if you want your own bill checked against what it should say, get in touch. Our business rates calculator models the English multiplier system and does not apply here; there is no Northern Ireland version of it yet, precisely because Reval2026 is on hold.