Westminster City Council has unearthed a snail breeding racket which has been operating secret snail farms in empty office spaces.
The scheme has seen commercial properties being registered as ‘agricultural facilities’, rendering the occupiers exempt from paying business rates on empty spaces.
Westminster City Council has discovered four snail breeding companies failing to pay business rates, resulting in the local authority having lost more than £280,000 in revenue.
Following the discovery of multiple companies with the same director, the council is calling for anti-avoidance legislation which will minimise the impact of evasion schemes on local authorities and businesses.
Cllr Adam Hug, leader of Westminster City Council, said: ‘Rather than unscrupulous traders dropping on one avoidance scheme after another, it would be good to see a general clause on business rates avoidance and evasion which stops these kinds of activities in their tracks.’
‘As a local authority with limited resources, we enforce wherever we can. We will be on the trail of the snail racketeers or anyone else who thinks they can cheat the taxpayer’, he added.
