Boxes reportedly containing snails were uncovered by Westminster City Council officers in West End offices.
Teams from the council’s Revenues team went to office addresses in Old Marylebone Road.
In the offices there were a relatively small number of sealed boxes purporting to contain snails.
Westminster Council describes this as ongoing issue in the two buildings,.
It believes it is an attempt to avoid the payment of business rates (NNDR) through claiming that a commercial property is a snail farm and therefore exempt from business as a “a fish farm / agricultural use” property.
There is a business rate exemption in Rating Law for properties occupied as an agricultural building or Fish Farm.
While in reality organisers of the scam know that the Valuation Office (central government agency) will never grant an agricultural business rate exemption, the council is forced to go through the legal hoops of winding up the shell company which is occupying the office space.
As the council must hold the occupier of a property as liable for business rates, the landlord does not have to pay any business rates and therefore can be considered as complicit in this arrangement.
Westminster City Council has so far wound up four snail companies for non payment of business rates.
It is now seeking to wind up a further two companies – Snai1 Primary Products 2024 and Wessex Associated Trading (A25) for non-payment of rates.
The Council is in addition asking the Insolvency Service to investigate whether the director of these companies should be disqualified from being a director of any future companies.
Cllr Adam Hug, leader of Westminster City Council, said: “This latest raid vividly illustrates an issue of business rates avoidance based on the ludicrous notion of snail farms which we have raised with central Government before.
“In the last fortnight we have discovered more boxes of snails in empty office buildings in Westminster so there is little sign of this racket slowing up.
“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.”
