Retailers are being urged to write to their MPs to air their objections about the new Business Rates scheme. Brian Madderson, the new chairman of RMI Petrol, is also urging those retailers who are either lessors of a service station, or are renting their forecourt to other operators, to provide on a confidential basis what could prove to be extremely valuable information regarding rental costs. "We need to get a broader picture of what petrol filling station rental values are," explained Madderson,

who has spent the past month locked in meetings and communications with the Valuations Office Agency about its 2010 Revaluation Scheme for forecourts. "We continue to press the VOA very hard to reconsider the scheme," he said. "The potential if we didn’t back it as an industry is that the VOA could end up with a mass of appeals from April 1 which could take years to work through."