Non-domestic rates – Completion notice – Validity – Schedule 4A to Local Government Finance Act 1988 – First respondent carrying out redevelopment of building – Appellant council delivering completion notice to bring building into rating list with effect from specified date -– Notice addressed to “owner” of building rather than first respondent by name – Notice handed to building receptionist and then scanned and forwarded electronically to first respondent – Whether notice invalidated by failure to name first respondent – Whether notice validly served – Appeal allowed
The first respondent owned a building on Kingsway, London, WC2B, which it had redeveloped to provide 130,000 sq ft of office space behind the original building façade. Discussions took place between the first respondent’s rating agent and the appellant council, as billing authority, regarding the entry of the building into the 2010 rating list. The appellants informed the rating agent that they intended to serve a completion notice, under Schedule 4A to the Local Government Finance Act 1988, to bring the building into the list with effect from June 2012. They asked the agent to confirm the owner of the building but it was unwilling to do so without first obtaining instructions from its client, which were not forthcoming.
In March 2012, the appellants delivered a completion notice in their proposed terms to the building by hand. The notice was simply addressed to the “Owner” of the building and was handed to a receptionist employed by the company which managed the building on the first respondent’s behalf. Neither that company nor its receptionist had any authority to accept the service of legal documents on behalf of the first respondent. The receptionist scanned the completion notice and transmitted it electronically to the first respondent.
The first respondent appealed against the completion notice and also submitted a proposal that the building’s entry in the rating list, with a rateable value of £2.75m, be deleted on the grounds that the completion notice had been invalid. The proposal was not accepted and the first respondent’s appeal against that decision was determined by the Valuation Tribunal for England (VTE) along with the completion notice appeal.
Allowing the appeals, the VTE held that the omission of the building owner’s name did not invalidate the notice itself but did invalidate the service of the notice, since the provisions for service of a completion notice in para 8 of Schedule 4A required it to be addressed to the owner in all cases save those to which para 8(c) applied, namely where the name or address of the owner could not be ascertained after reasonable enquiry. The appellants appealed.
Held: The appeals were allowed.
(1) The completion notice was not formally defective. The statutory requirements for a valid completion notice described in para 2(1) of Schedule 4A to the 1988 Act were satisfied where the notice specified the building to which the notice related and the day which the appellants proposed should be the completion day in relation to the building. No form of completion notice was prescribed by the statute and no other information was required to be given. Para 2(1) did not make it a requirement that a completion notice be addressed to the intended recipient. In any event, the completion notice served by the appellants was addressed to the owner of the building, although not by name. The identification of the intended recipient of a formal document by reference to a status or capacity was not an uncommon technique and the adoption of that technique was not inconsistent with the purpose of a completion notice, as para 8(c) demonstrated. Any person into whose hands the completion notice comes would know whether they were the owner of the building and the intended recipient of the notice. It was not necessary to the operation of the scheme that the intended recipient be identified by name rather than by status.
It followed that the completion notice delivered by the appellant was formally valid. It was nonetheless preferable, where possible, that the billing authority should identify the owner by name. The name and address of the owner could be established without difficulty by making an inquiry at the Land Registry or by making use of the right conferred by section 16 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 to require the provision of the information.
(2) It was not the case that a valid notice could only be addressed to “the owner” if reasonable enquiries had been made and the identity of the owner could not be ascertained. Para 8 of Schedule 4A was concerned only with permissible modes of service and not with the form of a completion notice. It performed an important function where service was disputed in that, where any one of the three modes of service identified in para 8 was adopted, the giver of the notice would be able to rely on the notice without the need to prove that it came to the attention of the intended recipient, with the effect that the risk of non-receipt passed to the intended recipient. However, the modes of service described in para 8 were permissive rather than mandatory and any other method of service which brought the completion notice into the hands of the owner would be sufficient. Para 8(c) did not create an additional requirement, absent from para 2, as to the form which a completion notice had to take and the information that it had to convey. It did no more than permit service by a particular method in specified circumstances.
(3) The appellants’ completion notice had been validly served. Whether the mode of service was effective depended not on the content of the document itself but on whether it was delivered in such a way as to come into the hands of the intended recipient. While service had not been effected by delivery into the hands of the receptionist, since the receptionist was not an agent of the respondent for the purpose of receiving legal documents at the building on its behalf, service had subsequently been achieved by the electronic transmission of the notice to the first respondent. The purpose of the completion notice was to inform the building owner of the appellants’ belief that the building could reasonably be expected to be completed within the time specified in the notice so that, if the owner disagreed with that assessment, it could exercise its right of appeal under para 4. The steps taken by the appellants, coupled with the actions of an employee of the first respondent’s agent, had brought the notice to the attention of the first respondent, which had duly appealed. When considering the validity of service, it was relevant to have regard to the purpose of the document as fixing a liability to pay a rate, the consequences of doubt over whether service had been successfully achieved and the ready availability of reliable methods of service permitted by para 8 of Schedule 4A of the 1988 Act and section 233 of the Local Government Act 1972. Nonetheless, in a case where the vital information had successfully been imparted to the person who needed to receive it, and that person had acted on it by exercising the right of appeal, the need for discipline and regularity in the exercise of the statutory power was not a sufficiently powerful consideration to require that the recipient’s liability be determined on the basis that the information had never been received.
It followed that service had taken place when the electronic copy of the completion notice arrived in the hands of the first respondent. In reaching that conclusion, the tribunal should not be taken to condone sloppy procedure in the addressing or delivery of completion notices or any other important documents.
Sebastian Kokelaar (instructed by the legal department of Westminster City Council) appeared for the appellants; Daniel Kolinsky QC (instructed by Jones Lang LaSalle) appeared for the first respondent; the second respondent valuation officer did not appear and was not represented.
Sally Dobson, barrister
Click here to read transcript: Westminster Council v UKI Kingsway
