A few weeks ago, district council chief executives from up and down the country received an unexpected letter from their local NHS trusts. It outlined the case for local authorities to apply mandatory business rates relief to their local trusts, backdated for six years.

In my patch, we estimate that such a claim would be in the region of £11m. Multiply this by the acute trusts nationally, the total impact could be over £1.5bn. In a time of tightened budgets, this is a cost that local authorities cannot afford to absorb. We are grateful to the LGA for picking up this issue so quickly and seeking legal opinion.