Thousands of businesses are still waiting for small business rate relief after the process that councils go through to issue new bills has been subject to months of delay.

Local Government Minister Marcus Jones has set a deadline of 21 August for the software providers to local councils to provide updates so that new bills can be issued to businesses that are due relief.

A DCLG spokesman said: “We’ve been clear that local authorities should take urgent steps to make sure small businesses benefit from the funding that we announced at the Budget in April.

“There are councils that have pressed ahead and issued revised bills. Others have chosen to wait for software updates to deliver this particular scheme and we’ve taken steps to make sure business get this relief as quickly as possible.”

The Government aims to have new bills with affected businesses by September of this year.

The Chancellor has also confirmed that the indexation of business rates will switch from RPI to CPI from April 2020. The Treasury estimates that this will save businesses a total of £1.1bn by 2022.