EVERYBODY
WINS!
We’ve helped forge highly successful alliances between landlords and their agents with local councils, local businesses and local communities for more than a decade. Time and again we demonstrate that supporting good causes is good for business. Everybody wins and in the current economic climate, this has never been more important. We connect landlords, agents and developers with good causes with various levels of funding across the UK.
The idea is simple, low risk, legal and proven. By occupying otherwise empty commercial premises, a charity can reduce a landlord’s business rates burden by qualifying for, and paying, 20% of the normal empty business rates charge. This is a special rate only available to genuine charities and social causes using your space. The landlord saves money and gains a swift-to-implement, no-notice tenancy plus all the CSR, positive PR of a going concern they can handle. Equally, the charity gets access to premises they could not otherwise afford. Everyone wins!
Is it really ethical? I hear you ask. the short answer is yes. Furthermore, landlords such as AXA, British Land, Land Securities, Savills, CBRE, Barclays and William Peers Group would not have used our services if their legal teams considered anything was untoward. Charities too are understandably careful about who they collaborate with these days and again trust ASTOP to deliver ethical solutions for their needs. MIND, Age UK, Rotary Club, Lions Club and Freecycle, as well as several food banks, housing associations, furniture charities and dozens of other smaller charitable organisations and social enterprises have all worked with ASTOP. Indeed, such is our reputation, that our use of retail, warehouse & office space has now been accepted by over 100 local authorities and commended by councillors and MPs across the UK political spectrum. Unlike the discredited “in and out” rates mitigation alternatives, which councils now frown upon, the charity-landlord partnerships we create are widely accepted as the most ethical form of rates reduction by both local and national government.
