Thomas Stratton is Principal at Avison Young. He has over 35 years of experience as a business rates consultant in private practice and has been involved with business rates appeals throughout England, Wales, and Scotland as well as Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and the Channel Islands. Before moving to the West Midlands in 1996 Thomas did 7 years of rating work from the London office and prior to that he worked for Lee Baron Commercial, also in London.

Throughout his professional career he has gained extensive experience in the different forms of rating valuation through negotiating and settling appeals on a variety of property types for all clients including corporate offices, retail premises, warehousing and workshops, including trade counter properties and other more unique types of property such as airports, data centres, bullion stores and communication hereditaments.

Thomas has specialist knowledge and in depth experience of the central Birmingham office market. He has led central negotiation on offices within Birmingham for the last 20 years and has agreed reductions for “office over supply” and “tramwork disturbance” providing office occupiers with significant relief following this disturbance.

Tom is also well versed in both the contractor’s and the receipts and expenditure methods of valuation and has knowledge and experience in dealing with specialist properties requiring these valuation approaches such as airports, communication hereditaments, licence and leisure premises, ports and various specialist government premises. He is a past President of the Rating Surveyors’ Association and has sat on various advisory and professional boards/panels and currently continues to support several stakeholder bodies.