A HOTEL owner facing a 400 per cent business rent hike has appealed for something to be done by chancellor Phillip Hammond to prevent businesses being crippled.

Jeremy Ornellas, who owns Blanch House in Atlingworth Street in Kemp Town, Brighton, said: “Ask yourself, what else has gone up 400 per cent in that time?”

It comes amid growing demands both in the city and nationwide for the Chancellor to take steps to ameliorate the worst excesses of the increases in business rates caused by a recent revaluation which takes into account property price rises since 2008. Mr Ornellas told The Argus that his business has not yet received the formal bill for business rates but has had the property revalued.

He has used the government’s online valuation estimation tool to discover how his costs will go up.

Rates for the property will quadruple from around £10,000 to around £40,000 annually.

He said: “I was shocked to realise it’s so huge an increase and I’m sure we aren’t alone. I’m sure lots of other hotels and BnBs will have an issue too. Obviously we can’t increase our prices that much. And you ask yourself what else has gone up 400 per cent in that time - not salaries, not property prices.”

Mr Ornellas was very clear that the business will not go under, nor reduce their team of ten staff in the face of the price rise. But he said more should be done to aid businesses in his position.

“It would be really good if they came up with more relief. They need to come up with something.

The 59-year-old hotelier, who has run the Kemp Town guesthouse with his partner Kerry since 2011, is taking the news stoically. He said: “It is what it is, but to get an increase like that is troubling.”

Other traders have called for the whole business rates system to be replaced with a revenue tax.

Business rates hit high street businesses but online retailers are protected because their warehouse properties tend to be in inexpensive locations away from town centres.

On Wednesday Caroline Lucas brought the Blanch House example to the attention of Theresa May at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister said: “I’ve asked the Chancellor and the communities secretary to make sure there is appropriate relief in those hardest cases.”

Later Number 10 clarified that the remark did not amount to a promise of specific funds but it is one of a number of signs emanating from the Government that it may be seeking to soften the impact of the increases.

Business will have to pay annual rates equivalent to around half the annual rental value of their property - as valued in 2015- from April.