Thomas Stratton is Principal at Avison Young. He has over 30 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.

Thomas is the current President of the Rating Surveyors’ Association and has been an active member of the RSA committee for over 10 years. He sits on various working panels/groups including the Public Bodies Liaison Group.  Thomas has coordinated many Rating Surveyors’ Association committees for retail with the Valuation Office Agency as a town chairman as well as coordinating other categories of properties representing the interests of a large number of occupier and landlord clients on business rates matters.

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.

His also has a detailed knowledge of the contractor’s method of valuation and deals with airports, local authority properties, educational premises and other government premises. He also deals with licence and leisure properties throughout the Midlands region and is experienced with the receipts and expenditure method of valuation.