WEST Somerset Council is considering fighting back against a ruling which has forced it to pay a £7.2 million business rates refund in respect of Hinkley Point B.

Hinkley owner EDF Energy is to receive £2.3m, while £4.9m is paid to the Government under the Transitional Protection Scheme and West Somerset Council has had to fund 40% of this refund.

EDF successfully appealed against its business rates rating earlier this year and the payments were backdated to 2010.

The reason councillors deem this backdating to be unjust is because up until April 2013, the central Government received business rate payments and distributed them nationally in the form of a formula grant.

After April 2013 local authorities were allowed to keep up to half of their business rates, with the rest going to Government who would then redistribute this money to support public services through other funding mechanisms.

Speaking at the full council meeting held on Wednesday, August 19, scrutiny committee chairman Cllr Peter Murphy said: "There is a fundamental unfairness in being asked to pay back money that we did not receive.

"This change to the business rates system puts this council in severe financial difficulty."

Council leader Cllr Anthony Trollope-Bellew said that councillors had met with a local government troubleshooter through its work with the Local Government Association about the issue and are now looking into the possibility of taking up a judicial review.

Cllr Trollope-Bellew also noted that a judicial review is an expensive process and the cash-strapped council would have to be very confident of getting a result to justify such action.

Dunster and Timberscombe representative Cllr Bryan Leaker suggested it could be worth trying to form a joint case with other councils affected such as Hartlepool to split both the cost and the risk.

West Somerset Council faces budget cuts of more than £560,000 in the next financial year, which is 12% of the authority's overall budget.