Rating–Case stated by Lands Tribunal–Rating of former railway hotel owned by British Transport Hotels Ltd–Proposal by ratepayers that the assessment of the hotel (gross value £18,000, rateable value £14,972) should be deleted from the list, the grounds being that the assessment was ‘incorrect, excessive and bad in law’–Local valuation court decided not to direct that the assessment be deleted, but that it be reduced to gross value £1,000 and rateable value £805–Submission by rating authority that local valuation court had no power on the basis of the proposal to reduce the assessment, but only to decide whether the assessment should be removed or remain in the list–Submission accepted by Lands Tribunal, but rejected by Court of Appeal–The correct interpretation of the proposal and the grounds was that, if the assessment was not deleted, at any rate it should be reduced–Criticism by court of rating authority’s action in appealing to Lands Tribunal against ‘rational’ and ‘just and fair’ conclusion by local valuation court
This was an
appeal by case stated from a decision of the Lands Tribunal (Victor Wellings
QC) (1977) 246 EG 491, [1978] 1 EGLR 185 reversing a decision of a Liverpool
local valuation court. The appellants before the Court of Appeal were the
ratepayers, British Transport Hotels Ltd, and Alan Antrobus Gibbons, the
valuation officer. The respondent in the Court of Appeal was the rating
authority, Liverpool City Council. The property which was the subject of
dispute was known as the Exchange Hotel, Tithebarn Street, Liverpool, which had
in fact ceased to be used as an hotel from 1971 onwards.
J A R Grove
(instructed by the solicitor to the British Railways Board) appeared on behalf
of the first appellant (British Transport Hotels Ltd); A P Fletcher (instructed
by the Solicitor of Inland Revenue) represented the second appellant (the
valuation officer); and P H Goldsmith (instructed by the solicitor to the
Liverpool City Council, represented the respondent.
Giving
judgment, MEGAW LJ said: There is before us a case stated by the Lands Tribunal
at the request of British Transport Hotels Ltd. It relates to a decision made
by one of the legal members of the Lands Tribunal, Victor Wellings QC, on
December 19 1977. The questions of law raised by the special case stated to
this court are in effect whether the member of the Lands Tribunal was correct
in law on a matter which he decided.
The relevant
facts are set out in a statement of facts which was agreed between the parties
for the purpose of the hearing before the Lands Tribunal, which itself was an
appeal from a local valuation court at Liverpool given on September 29 1976. I
summarise, as briefly as I think is possible, the statement of facts as it
appears.
The appellant
before the Lands Tribunal, the respondent before this court, is the Liverpool
City Council, who were the rating authority in respect of the property in
question. The first respondent before the Lands Tribunal and the first
appellant before us is British Transport Hotels Ltd. It changed its identity at
one stage but nothing turns on that. The second respondent before the Lands
Tribunal and the second appellant before us is Alan Antrobus Gibbons, who is
the valuation officer concerned in the valuation in question. The dispute
relates to the value for the purposes of rating in the Liverpool Metropolitan
District Rating Area of property which is described in the valuation list as
‘Hotel and Premises, Exchange Hotel, Tithebarn Street: Gross Value £18,000
Rateable Value £14,972.’
The Exchange
Hotel had been occupied as a railway hotel up to the year 1971, but from 1971
onwards it had ceased to be used as an hotel. Whether or not it had been wholly
unused or whether it had been used for some kind of storage is not clear, but I
do not think it matters for the purposes of this appeal. British Transport
Hotels Ltd decided in the year 1975 that they would make a proposal in respect
of the valuation list in relation to the Exchange Hotel to apply to the rating year
1974-75. They accordingly made a proposal which is set out in document 1 of the
bundle before us. As everything in this appeal turns on the wording of that
document it is desirable that I should read it, if not in full, at any rate
fairly comprehensively.
It is headed
‘General Rate Act 1967, Proposal for alteration of Valuation List.’ Then the address of the property to which the
proposal relates is given as ‘Exchange Hotel, Exchange Station, Tithebarn
Street, Liverpool 2.’ The rating area is
Liverpool and the name of the person or body by whom or on whose behalf the
proposal is made is British Railways Board/British Transport Hotels Ltd. Then
in print on the form are the words ‘Alteration which that person or body hereby
proposes should be made in the valuation list’ and there is typed in the words
‘That the Assessment should be deleted from the Valuation List.’ Then there are the printed words ‘Grounds on
which that alteration is proposed’ and typed in the words ‘That the Assessment
is incorrect, excessive and bad in law.’
The name of the owner is given as British Railways Board, it is dated
March 21 1975 and it is signed by a gentleman called R C J Bray FRICS, estate
surveyor and manager, as agent for the owner (ie British Railways Board or
British Transport Hotels Ltd).
On June 23
1975 the valuation officer, Mr Gibbons, duly objected to the proposal of March
21 1975 and in due course he transmitted to the clerk of the local valuation
panel copies of the proposal and his notes of objection. On September 24 1976
the local valuation court, duly constituted from the Merseyside local valuation
panel, heard the appeal of the valuation officer against the proposal. On
September 29 1976 the court decided–a decision for which it gave reasons
clearly stated in the document–that it was competent for the court to direct
that an alteration should be made on the valuation list in pursuance of the
proposal, ascribing an assessment of gross value £1,000 and rateable value
£805. The court gave directions for the valuation list to be altered
accordingly.
At the same
time, as I understand it, there was also before the local valuation court a
proposal by the same ratepayers in
1975-76. The form of the proposal, which was submitted on March 12 1976, had
been altered. It simply asked that the assessment should be substantially
reduced and gave as its grounds that the assessment was incorrect and
excessive. An agreement was made in writing between all concerned–the potential
ratepayer, the rating authority and the valuation officer–under which the
proposal of March 12 1976 was agreed and, in accordance with the provisions of
section 72 of the General Rate Act 1967, the valuation list was altered accordingly
to a gross value of £1,000 and a rateable value of £805. In other words, it was
accepted that that was a fair and appropriate rateable value for the years
1975-76. There is no suggestion that there is any material difference which
would have made the appropriate rateable value different in the previous year
1974-75.
Nevertheless,
the rating authority, the Liverpool City Council, saw fit to contend–on what I
am bound to say was the most technical of technical grounds–that, in spite of
the obvious injustice resulting therefrom, the decision of the local valuation
court ought to be held to have been wrong in respect of the March 1975 proposal
because, in view of the form of that proposal, the local valuation court had no
authority merely to reduce the value of the assessment; that they could either
decide that the entry of the hereditament should be removed altogether from the
valuation list or that it should remain in the valuation list, but that they
had no jurisdiction to alter the amount if the decision was that it should
remain in the valuation list.
Now, the basis
of that contention is really quite simply stated, having regard to the document
which I read at the outset, the proposal form of March 21 1975. It will be
remembered that, against the printed words ‘Alteration which that person or
body hereby proposes should be made in the valuation list’ were the words ‘That
the Assessment should be deleted from the Valuation List.’ It is said that that was the contention of
the ratepayer and that the ratepayer is, as a matter of law and on the basis of
statute and authority, not entitled to go beyond that contention, and that the
local valuation court was not entitled to give them any relief beyond that
contention. The words ‘the Assessment should be deleted,’ it is submitted,
should be taken to mean that the whole entry ought to be deleted. If it meant
that the value of the assessment should be deleted, then it would have left a
gap, because it did not make any proposal that anything should be substituted
for the value instead. That was the submission of the rating authority, and so
they still contend before us, having succeeded on that submission before the
Lands Tribunal. On the true meaning of this proposal, said the rating
authority, the only ‘contention’ of the ratepayers was that there should be a
complete removal of the entry from the valuation list; hence the local
valuation court had no jurisdiction to reduce the amount to what we now know
was indeed the fair and appropriate amount for the year in question. This
submission ignores, or fails to give proper effect to, the fact that the
proposal went on in its printed form to say ‘Grounds on which that alteration
is proposed.’ It is wrong, as an
ordinary matter of construction, to segregate the two and to treat the first
part as decisive of the meaning, without taking into account the second
part–the grounds on which that alteration is proposed. The grounds on which
that alteration is proposed were that the assessment was incorrect, excessive
and bad in law. There is there, plainly, an inference. The inference is that
the ratepayer is contending that, if the assessment is not ‘deleted’–is not
reduced to a nil assessment–at any rate it should be a lesser assessment as
currently appears in the valuation list. Since it is asserted that the
assessment is ‘excessive,’ that plainly involves the ‘contention’ that it
should be less, and the acceptance that a lesser value may be correct.
I am wholly
unable to see, despite the careful and ingenious and elaborate argument which
was presented to us, that that document, on its true construction and in
relation to any of the surrounding facts of which we can properly take notice,
involves any ambiguity. If the ratepayer was claiming that the amount that
appeared as the value of the assessment was excessive and, on the true
construction of that document, was asking that, if it was not eliminated
altogether, it should be reduced, I can see no reason why the local valuation
court were not entitled to do that which they themselves decided that they were
entitled to do. With great respect to the learned member of the Lands Tribunal
who gave his decision to the contrary, I find great difficulty in following the
basis on which he arrived at that decision.
I refer to one
or two passages in the report of R v Winchester Area Assessment
Committee, ex parte Wright [1948] 2 KB 455. That is a decision of this
court. At p 459 Scott LJ, beginning the leading judgment, said: ‘It has been
judicially recognised that, in passing the Rating and Valuation Act 1925 it was
the intention of Parliament that an aggrieved person should be able to act upon
many of its provisions, including section 37, without legal assistance.’ Greer LJ said in R v West Norfolk
Assessment Committee ex parte Ward (1930) 94 JP 201 at p 203: ‘. . . it is
not intended by the statute that his difficulties’–ie the difficulties of the
person making the proposal–‘should be such that he would have to go to an
expert or to a lawyer to draw up his proposal.’
Asquith LJ in
his judgment in R v Winchester Area Assessment Committee ex parte
Wright at the bottom of p 463 said: ‘But it has been laid down emphatically
that a proposal need not be a strict or formal document and I think statements
contained in parts of the proposal other than the space opposite ‘grounds of
proposal’ can be prayed in aid to eke out insufficiency at that point.’
I respectfully
agree and I would add that I think that, in the document with which we are here
concerned, there is no basis on which it can justifiably be said that the words
inserted against ‘Grounds on which that alteration is proposed’ cannot be
prayed in aid to eke out any insufficiency or any ambiguity (if there were
such) in the wording of the part of the document in which the ‘alteration
proposed’ is stated. In my opinion, with great respect to the learned member of
the Lands Tribunal, the decision at which he arrived was wrong and I would deal
with the case in the appropriate way by answering the questions in paragraph 5
of the case stated by the Lands Tribunal, the effect of which will be to
restore the decision of the local valuation court.
Agreeing, SHAW
LJ said: On what is a narrow question of construction of particular words used
in a particular context there is nothing to be added to the judgment of my
Lord.
I cannot,
however, forbear to say that it is a great pity that, when the Merseyside
Valuation Panel had given its decision–which was not only, if I may say so,
rational but also one which led to a just and fair result–the Liverpool City
Council should have thought it necessary to pursue the matter to the Lands
Tribunal. That has made it necessary for the ratepayer to come to this court so
that the position might be put right. It is not as though some general
proposition of law, which might in the future affect the interests of the
rating authority, had to be considered. It is simply the meaning of certain
words which appear to me, as they did to my Lord, to bear only one sensible
meaning.
I would answer
the questions posed accordingly and allow the appeals.
WALLER LJ,
after expressing agreement with both the judgments which had been delivered,
said: I can understand that, if the words ‘that the assessment should be
deleted from the Valuation List’ stood entirely alone, it would be possible to
interpret them as referring to the whole entry, as was contended by Mr
Goldsmith, particularly as the ratepayers were connected with the British
Transport Commission. But the words do not stand alone.
Firstly, one
year later the same ratepayer put in a similar proposal using the word
‘assessment’ and Mr Wellings, in his judgment of the Lands Tribunal, accepted
that, in that notice, the words were clearly intended to refer to the values
and not the whole entry. One would expect, in the normal
(albeit maybe by different individuals), would be intended to mean the same
thing.
Secondly,
there are the grounds to which my Lord has already referred ‘that the assessment
is incorrect, excessive and bad in law.’
It is true that the words ‘incorrect and bad in law’ would cover the
meaning contended for by the respondents before this court (that is to say the
rating authority), but the word ‘excessive’ can only mean that the assessment
should be smaller. In my opinion ‘excessive’ clearly shows that the assessment
refers only to the valuation figure, as my Lord has said, and deleting the
figure would be the best that could be achieved by the ratepayer.
Like my Lord,
Shaw LJ, I express surprise at this argument. I can understand the attempt to
adopt the strained meaning of the words if to do so would be to achieve
justice, but in this case the adoption of the strained meaning of the words
would be to achieve a valuation some £14,000 higher than what all parties
agreed was the correct valuation in the following year and would obviously have
been the correct valuation for that year if the documentation had been more
clearly or differently set out. I find it surprising that a local authority,
having had a decision from the local valuation court, should have seen fit to
upset it on such grounds.
The appeal
was allowed with costs in the Court of Appeal and below.