Commercial landlords face significant costs when a property sits empty, from business rates to higher insurance and security risks.
By enabling temporary charitable occupation, you can unlock three powerful tax incentives that dramatically reduce these costs while supporting genuine social impact.
Charities are eligible for substantial business rates relief. By placing a vetted charity in your vacant commercial property, landlords typically save around 80 percent of their empty rates.
What this delivers:
ASTOP manages the entire process, ensuring the occupation is genuine, transparent and aligned with government guidance.
ASTOP’s team have managed the ethical temporary occupation of over 1,000 sites since 2009 for landlords, agents, consultants and developers including:
Landlords who pay UK tax can access a second, often overlooked tax break when they provide a charity with rent-free occupation for at least 366 days. After this point, the rental value “given up” becomes a tax-deductible business expense, similar to a non-cash Gift Aid donation.
What this delivers:
This tax break is one of the most effective tools available to UK taxpayers with empty commercial property. For a more in-depth explanation of this tax break, see the following video clip.
For developers planning a change-of-use or redevelopment, CIL can be one of the biggest threats to viability, especially when a property has been empty for years. Few realise that temporary charitable occupation can reduce or remove this liability entirely.
How it works:
For many developers, this is the single most financially significant benefit of legitimate, temporary charitable occupation.
For more on this, see here.
In summary, here are the three tax breaks you might be eligible for, with our help:
Immediate and substantial reduction in business rates
Retrospective tax deduction on foregone rent
Partial or full CIL exemption for redevelopment on ‘change of use’
ASTOP has a proven track record of providing ethical business rate relief for empty commercial properties. We do this by partnering up commercial landlords with worthy not-for-profit, charity and community organisations who need support.
If that sounds like something you would benefit from, why not contact our team today?
