He is a past winner of the CIPR's Business Journalist of the Year and Environmental Journalist of the Year awards. Finance Minister John O’Dowd’s binning of Land & Property Services’ (LPS) revaluation process for non-domestic properties came just one week after the draft list of new values was revealed. On Monday in the Assembly, the Sinn Féin minister was defending Reval2026, claiming it was the “fairest possible way” to rebalance business rates, but within 72 hours he’d capitulated. What on paper should’ve been an ideologically neutral exercise to ensure business rates stay in line with inflation quickly transformed into a political cudgel. There is clearly something flawed about the revaluation process and some may take solace from the fact that the minister’s has reversed the process.