Guidance

National non-domestic rates for billing authorities: form guidance

Updated 20 March 2025

Applies to England

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) closed on 31 March 2025. All activity has moved to the Department for Education (DfE). You should continue to follow this guidance.

1. Introduction 

These instructions are to help billing authorities who are on the central national non-domestic rates (NNDR) payment process for local authority maintained schools and academies. The Department for Education (DfE) pays NNDR bills directly to billing authorities on behalf of local authority maintained schools and academies. 

Further information on this payment process can be found in the operational guidance for billing authorities on the central payment process guidance. 

The NNDR online claim form opens on 1 April 2025.

2. Eligibility to claim 

The annual process for billing authorities to confirm their NNDR payment process for each year concludes at the beginning of the year, in January. You can confirm the payment process your billing authority will be following as of 1 April 2025 by viewing the ‘Billing authority’ tab on the schools and academies - confirmation of your NNDR payment process 2025 to 2026 spreadsheet.

If you did not confirm to DfE your intention to implement the central payment process, you should continue to implement your existing payment process and bill your maintained schools and academies directly. 

2.1 Eligible schools 

All local authority maintained schools and academies, including 16 to 19 academies that are not further education (FE) establishments, that deliver education fall under the central payment process. 

The schools and academies spreadsheet details the schools and academies that fall under the remit of each billing authority. 

Maintained schools

1. Local authority maintained schools
2. Community school
3. Community special school
4. Foundation school
5. Foundation special school
6. Pupil referral unit (only where a prior arrangement exists)
7. Voluntary aided school
8. Voluntary controlled school
9. City technology college

Academies

1. Pre 16 academy schools
2. Special academies
3. Alternative provision academies
4. Academy 16 to 19 converter
5. Academy 16 to 19 sponsor led
6. Academy special converter (only where a prior arrangement exists)
7. Free schools
8. Free schools alternative provision (only where a prior arrangement exists)
9. Free schools special (only where a prior arrangement exists)
10. Free schools 16 to 19 (only where a prior arrangement exists)
11. Studio schools
12. University technical colleges

Early years or post-16-provider-based provision which is part of the overall school operation will continue to be funded as they have been historically under the central process. Maintained nursery schools are out of scope.

Sixth forms which are part of secondary schools will also be funded as they have been historically under the central process.

Special schools are in scope of the changes, however, will often receive 100% relief for rates. If this is not the case, we would expect schools to apply for exemption with the Valuation Office Agency.

3. When to claim 

The deadline for submitting your initial claim is 22 May 2025. 

For in-year adjustments and additional claims, these can continue to be submitted up until 2 February 2026.

Claims can be amended up until the deadline.

It will not be possible, under any circumstances, to grant any extensions to the deadline. If you miss this deadline then you will need to wait until the next financial year, noting that there are restrictions on which years you can claim for each year.

4. Accessing the claim form 

4.1 Before you start 

Before you start the claims process, you will need to have: 

• a DfE Sign-in account that is linked to your billing authority (to note, not your local authority)
• ‘NNDR service’ added to your billing authority DfE sign-in account 
• confirmed you are an eligible establishment
• prepared your data; the data template can be downloaded by accessing the NNDR claim form or from national non-domestic rates: guidance for billing authorities.

5. DfE Sign-in 

5.1 Sign in to  your  DfE Sign-in account 

Follow steps 1 to 5 below to proceed with your claim form. 

1. Access the online NNDR claim form and when prompted, enter your DfE Sign-in credentials (your username and password) for authentication.  

2. Choose the organisation for whom you are completing the form (this is only required if your account is linked to several organisations). 

3. The next page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed in. This will show the name, address and unique identifier of the billing authority, as well as the name and email address of the person who signed into DfE Sign-in. 

4. If these details are correct, select ‘Continue’ to go to the next page. 

5. If you believe these details are incorrect, you can contact us via the Customer Help Portal and we will investigate. You can still proceed with your submission. 

To complete the form, your account must be connected to the billing authority you are completing the form for. This is your organisation type that will allow access to this form and is different to the local authority. You must also add ‘NNDR services’ in DfE Sign-in. Instructions for adding both these additional services to your DfE Sign-in account are explained in section 5.3 and section 5.4 below. 

5.2 If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account  

If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account, you will need to create one by following steps 1 to 6 below:

1. Access DfE Sign-in page and select ‘create a DfE Sign-in account’.

2. Enter your name and email address (use a valid business email address that contains your name. To note, we are unable to accept generic emails, such as ‘admin’ or ‘info’).

3. We will send you an email to verify your email address. Copy the code from this email and paste it into the box on the verification page. 

4. Create a memorable password that must be at least 14 characters. A good way to create a secure and memorable password is to use 3 random words. You can use numbers, symbols and spaces.

5. Sign in using your new credentials.

6. Follow the next set of step instructions outlined in ‘Adding an organisation (billing authority) to your DfE Sign-in account’ in section 5.3 below.

You may have noticed the term ‘approver’ when creating your account. An approver is someone at your organisation responsible for controlling who has access to DfE Sign-in and the services within the system. This is usually a senior person, such as an administrator or a manager.

For security reasons, you will need one of your local authorities’ approvers authorisation before you can access the form.

5.3 Adding an organisation (billing authority) to your DfE Sign-in account

To add a new organisation to your DfE Sign-in account, follow steps 1 to 6 below:

1. Login to your DfE Sign-in account.

2. Select ‘Organisations’ from the tab at the top of the page.

3. Select ‘Request access to an organisation’ from the ‘Related actions’ on the righthand side of the page.

4. Enter the name of the billing authority you wish to add. Ensure the type of organisation you have selected from the search results is a ‘billing authority’ and not a ‘local authority’. It is really important for the purposes of NNDR that you are attached to a billing authority as this will allow access to the claim form.

5. Select the organisation from search results.

6. Enter comments for the approver and select ‘Confirm’.

Your request will be sent to the approver(s) of your organisation. If you do not already have an approver your request will be actioned by the DfE Sign-in support team.

Once your request to access an organisation has been approved, you will need to log back in and add ‘NNDR service’ to your account, by following the steps as outlined in section 5.4 below.

5.4 Adding NNDR service to your DfE Sign-in account

To add the NNDR service to your account, follow steps 1 to 6 below.

1. Login to your DfE Sign-in account.

2. Select ‘Services’ from the tab at the top of the page.

3. Select ‘Add services to my account’ from the ‘Related actions’ on the righthand side of the page.

4. Select the billing authority you would like the service added to.

5. Select ‘National non-domestic rates (NNDR)’ from the list of services.

6. Select ‘Confirm’.

Once your request to access the NNDR service has been approved, you can follow the steps outlined under sign in to your DfE Sign-in account to complete the claim form.

5.5 If you need further assistance 

If you need help using the DfE Sign-in service, use our DfE Sign-in help service where you will be able to request assistance. When raising a support request, select ‘Other’. 

If you are having problems accessing the form, you can contact us via our Customer Help Portal.

6. Completing the form

By clicking ‘Continue’ on each page this will take you through the form.

After completing all mandatory sections within the claim form, you will be prompted to complete the required declarations before you can submit your form. Once you have submitted your form, an explanation on what happens next will follow. 

6.1 Claim template file 

You can choose to download the claims submission template before you continue to upload your file.  You should select the ‘template’ link to download the most up to date file version. 

6.2 Download the claim template file 

This page allows you to download the most up to date version of the template file.  Click the file link to download the file to your device.  The file will download as an .XLSX file type (Excel).  This should be ‘saved as’ a .CSV (comma delimited) (*.csv) file type before the completed version is uploaded to DfE.   

6.3 Your claims 

This page allows you to upload your completed .CSV template file. 

6.4 Uploading the claim template file 

The file will initially be saved as an .XLSX file type (Excel) when downloaded. This should then be ‘saved as’ a .CSV file type before the completed version is uploaded to DfE.  When saving as .CSV you must select the option as highlighted in Image 1 below.

Image 1: saving a claim file as a .CSV file type

6.5 Validating your claim file 

Once you have uploaded the claim template file, click ‘Continue’ and the service will validate the file.  If the validation fails, you must clear the file errors and upload again.   

The validation issue may be caused due to using an out of date template. We recommend you download the most recent NNDR claims template and copy your data across to this, before resubmitting your claim.

You may experience a validation failure due to some common errors. In Annex 1: how to successfully validate your file, we have provided further guidance on fixing these errors. 

7. Completing your claim template

There may be instances where your NNDR data contains more than one property for a single school. 

Every educational provider in the UK has their own UK provider reference number (UKPRN). For most schools, there will be a one-to-one relationship between your account number for a property and the UKPRN for a school. However, there may be exceptions to this, for example, where an academy has a split site, you will have 2 NNDR account numbers against the same UKPRN. In these cases, you will present the numbers as 2 lines of data in your claims’ submission, each with the same UKPRN. 

7.1 Marking relevant properties within your NNDR system 

This may be a two-step process. Depending on your requirements you may need to flag properties on your system with a new payment code, and/or add the properties to a new payment group. 

7.2 Matching schools to NNDR properties 

Billing authorities will need to map DfE’s schools’ data to their NNDR property data. 

For maintained schools and academies, this can be done through a combination of matching postcodes and school names. 

7.3 Entering your data into the spreadsheet 

For each row/claim, enter the: 

• name of the school (ratepayer/liable parties) 
• property description 
• property address line 1 
• property postcode 
• property reference number 
• account reference number 
• amount due/net liability 
• if the property (or sports field) is being used for educational purposes

Do not add, remove, or change the names of any columns as this will prevent the service from accepting your claim.  

The name and address of the school you are claiming for, should match the equivalent DfE data. However, we understand that there may be minor discrepancies. We use this data to confirm reference numbers and claims values have been entered in the correct row. 

7.4 Including missing schools in your claim template

If there are schools relevant to your billing authority which are not listed in the schools and academies spreadsheet provided by DfE, you can manually add these to your claim template following these steps: 

1. Create a new row on the claim template and add the property reference number, the NNDR account reference number and the claim amount. 

2. Find the UKPRN, official school name and address by using get information about schools (GIAS).

3. Add the UKPRN, name and address to the relevant row. 

You do not need to contact us about these properties. We will identify them during the claims’ validation process. 

7.5 Properties you can or are unable to make a claim for 

The following properties should not be included in your claim: 

• maintained nursery schools/early years settings that are not part of the overall school operation for example run by a private provider 
• buildings used for non-educational purposes, for example, office and premises 
• rented buildings 
• FE establishments  
• private schools 

Early years provision which is part of the overall school operation (for example, nursery classes in primary schools) will continue to be funded as previous years under the central payment process. 

Sixth form provision within secondary schools will continue to be funded as previous years under the central payment process. 

We have detailed some examples below that may help you determine whether you can submit a claim: 

1. A school may have a playing field on a separate hereditament which is used by the school for educational purposes. The billing authority can submit a claim for this. 

2. A school has an adjacent nursery, which is a separate hereditament from the main school. Maintained nursery schools are not part of the new policy change so no claim can be submitted by the billing authority. The billing authority and the school must make arrangements to cover this rates bill. 

3. A school estate may be made up of a single hereditament which includes a nursery. As it is not possible to separate this property for rates purposes and it has been previously funded by DfE this will continue to happen under the central payment process. Where there is a clear requirement for a split, the billing authority and school must work together to have this rated separately. This is not a new policy change. 

Example 1:

You have a playing field on a separate hereditament, and it is used by the school, you can claim for the playing fields. If you have a nursery which is part of a larger primary school that is a separate hereditament from the main school, you will not be able to claim for the nursery. 

Example 2:

You have a single hereditament which includes a primary school, a maintained nursery school and playing fields. As it is not possible to separate out the hereditament into those areas which are relevant to DfE, and if these have been funded previously by DfE you can continue to submit a claim. 

7.6 Declarations 

Once you have completed uploading your claim, you will be presented with mandatory declarations.

You will not be able to submit your claim without agreeing to these declarations and to do this, you will need to tick each statement box to confirm your agreement.

Once you have completed this page, select ‘Continue’ to proceed. 

7.7 Confirmation 

The final form page confirms your claim has been submitted successfully. You will receive a unique reference number against your submission, followed by an explanation of what happens next. 

You will also receive an email confirming successful submission of your claim.

It is important you make a note of your unique reference number as this information is not included in the confirmation email.

We will review your claim and contact you if we require any additional information. 

7.8 Amend claim page 

Claims can be amended up until the deadline by selecting the link to the claim form. The deadline will not be extended. Once a new file is submitted, any previous submission(s) for this claim cycle will be overwritten. You must resubmit the completed file with your full list of claims.

We will only review the latest file. 

You will receive a new unique submission reference number for an amended claim.

7.9 Making in-year adjustments 

The service will remain open for any adjustments to rates claims. You can submit in-year adjustments until 2 February 2026. Any adjustments submitted after the deadline will be paid in the following claim year.

7.10 Historical claims 

Billing authorities moving onto the central payment process in 2025 to 2026 will not be able to submit NNDR prior year adjustments for their local authority maintained schools using the claims service. This is because historic adjustments for 2024 to 2025 have been submitted by local authorities in the 2025 to 2026 authority proforma tool. 

Billing authorities moving to the central payment process in 2025 to 2026 will pick up any prior year adjustments for their academies on previously paid claims back to 2019 to 2020 using the online service. 

Academies whose billing authority remains on their existing NNDR process can submit changes to previously paid claims back to 2019 to 2020 up until 2 February 2026 via the existing NNDR academy service. Claims submitted after the 2 February 2026 deadline will be paid during 2026 to 2027 financial year. 

You can read further information in changes to the payment process of schools’ business rates.

8. Enquiries 

If you have read this guidance and have any questions about the NNDR process or how to complete the online form, you can contact us via the Customer Help Centre

9. What happens next 

The information you have provided on your claim will be checked and validated against your funding allocation. As part of this process, we will carry out spot checks on receipted records.

10. Payments 

Billing authorities will receive payments via Bacs as a single lump sum.  

Payments will be made on the last working day of the month.

For new claims, the first payments to billing authorities will be 30 June 2025.

The cut-off date for claim uploads for June payment is 22 May 2025. 

Claims submitted after 22 May 2025 will be paid at the next reconciliation point. 

A remittance advice is automatically sent to you when a payment is made. On this, we will provide a separate breakdown of individual payment amounts with their associated account reference numbers. 

For reconciliation payments (positive adjustments to claims), the first payment will be made on 31 October 2025.  

The final payment for adjustments (which will include recoveries) will be made on 31 March 2026. 

The claim submission cut-off date for October 2025 payments is 11 September 2025, and 2 February 2026 for March 2026 payments. 

Any adjustment claims submitted after 2 February 2026 deadline, will be paid in the following claim year.  

In cases where we may have a query on a claim and we require clarification and/or further evidence, we will pay those claims within 2 months of receiving this additional clarification and/or evidence.

11. Annex 1: how to successfully validate your file 

11.1 Complete your claim template file

You must first download the current NNDR submission template. 

The template will save as an .XLSX file type (Excel) by default. You must convert your completed file to .CSV before you upload it.   

The template contains the column headers in the exact format needed by the NNDR service to validate your claim.

To complete your claim file, you will need to:

• remove example data

• add your school-level data

• do not change column headers or your file will be rejected

You can find further support on how to add your data to the file in section 7: completing your claim template 

Make sure you have populated columns M, O, P and R correctly by using the pre-prepared drop-down lists. These columns relate to your property and are labelled as follows:  

• is the property (or sports field) being used for educational purposes?
• property liability year
• is this an adjustment to a previous claim for the stated year?
• reason for adjustment (only applicable if claiming an adjustment, otherwise leave blank)

11.2 Prepare your claim file for validation and upload 

Follow the steps below to make sure your file will be successfully validated.

Step 1: Copy your data to a new blank workbook and save as .CSV (comma delimited) (*.csv)

Open a new blank workbook in Excel. 

Select the column headers and school-level claim data from your completed claim file.

It is important that you only select the claim template header column range and rows containing your populated data. Do not include the example data already populated when you downloaded the template.

Image 2: column headers and data

Copy the selected column headers and data.   

Paste this into the new blank workbook.   

Select ‘Save as’ or ‘Save a copy’ from the file menu.  

Select file type ‘CSV (comma delimited) (*.csv)’ then ‘Save’. You can use any file name when saving your claim file, but it should be a short file name that does not include any special characters.

Image 3: saving your claim file as a CSV (comma delimited) (*.csv) file type

Step 2: Cleanse your data to remove commas 

You must remove all commas from your data.

To do this in Excel, you will need to select:

‘Home>Find and Select>Replace’.

Image 4: removing commas from data in the claim file

Type a comma into the ‘Find what’ box. Do not enter any data in ‘Replace with’ box.   

Select ‘Replace All’.

Image 5: using the ‘Replace All’ function in the claim file

Step 3: Cleanse your data to check data formats 

The data format must be ‘General’ in columns N (‘Property net liability (the NEW FULL amount liable for the stated year and including any adjustments) £’) and Q (‘Property adjustment amount £’).  

To do this:

1. Click on the column label (N or Q).  This will highlight the column.

2. With the column selected, go to the ‘Number’ section of the ‘Home’ menu.

3. Select ‘General’ from the dropdown menu.

Image 6: selecting ‘General’ as the data format in column N of the claim file

Step 4: Cleanse your data to remove empty rows

Select all empty rows up to and including row 1020 and delete them by right clicking the mouse and selecting ‘Delete’.

Step 5: Other checks to ensure successful validation

You must populate all columns except for the last 2 which are for adjustments only. If you have missed a field (for example, a missing postcode), the service will ask you to provide the missing data before resubmitting your file. 

Image 7: example of a completed claim file

UKPRN values in column G should be a valid 8-digit number (for example, 10012345). You can check UKPRN numbers by searching for schools directly in the GIAS service, or by reviewing the schools and academies spreadsheet. 

If you have copied your billing authority code down the spreadsheet rows, you will need to check that Excel has not ‘filled series’ by escalating the code number by one each time.  

11.3 Upload your completed claim file into the NNDR service 

1. Go to ‘Upload your file’ page within the NNDR service.

2. Select ‘Choose File’ button.

Image 8: uploading a completed claim file into the NNDR service

This will launch a pop-up window. Use this to navigate to your completed CSV (comma delimited) (*.csv) file saved on your computer.

Image 9: saving your file on your computer

Once your file has been uploaded, select ‘Save and continue’. 

The service will scan the file for viruses and validate your file data. This may take a short while, depending on your service provider.  

The file validation check scans the content of your completed file. It checks that your file has the correct column headers in the correct position, all data is formatted correctly, and that there is no missing data.   

The validation process works through each of the checks in order. If your file fails one of the steps, the validation check will stop and provide you with a report on screen of how to fix the issue. The report will include the cell reference numbers of any missing data, or data items that must be corrected.

You must open your saved file outside of the service to fix any errors.  You may want to log out and sign in to the service again before re-uploading your amended file to ensure that you have not been ‘timed out’ whilst making your amendments. 

11.4 Error messages 

This section covers the typical errors you might encounter when uploading your claim template and provides solutions to clear them.

The selected file must be CSV

If the uploaded template is not saved as a .CSV file, you must save the template as a .CSV file and re-upload it. 

Column title is missing or mismatched

This error message means you may be using an out of date version of the claim template.

Download the current template then copy and paste data from the old template across to the new template.

It is important to ensure all populated columns transferred across from the old template to the new one match.

An unexpected error occurred while scanning your file 

If you experience an unexpected error, we recommend you make another attempt to upload your template.

If you continue to get an error message, try the following:

• clear your cache and cookies
• update your browser to the latest version
• upload your template from a different device or network

If you are still unable to upload your file, you can contact us using the Customer Help Portal

11.5 Successful validation

Once you have removed any errors and re-uploaded your file, select ‘Save and continue’.

You will then be directed to the mandatory declarations agreements and then able to submit your claim.

We will review your claim file and contact you if we need any further information to process your claim.