Rating – Rateable property – Equestrian facilities – Appellant valuation officer entering equestrian facilities adjacent to substantial country house as non-domestic property – Valuation tribunal allowing respondent owner’s appeal – Appellant appealing – Whether facilities were appurtenance belonging to or enjoyed with house – Appeal dismissed
The respondent and her husband were successful Olympic equestrians. They lived with their three children at Bourne Hill House, outside Horsham in West Sussex (the house). In 2007, planning permission was granted for an extension to the house, the demolition of existing stables, the conversion of the building formerly used as a shop into grooms’ accommodation and the upgrading of equestrian facilities to create a “private equestrian Olympic training yard”. The permitted use of the buildings and the yard was for the personal and private use of the applicant and for employees residing in the buildings, and not for commercial or competition purposes. The permission was subject to conditions. The grooms’ accommodation and the lodge were to be used as residential accommodation ancillary to the house only and were to be occupied by the owners, their family members and employees. The development was to be used only for training and breeding competition horses in connection with the house. It was not to be used by visiting members of the public or for staging equestrian competitions, the provision of livery services or as a riding school.
In 2013, on land adjoining their home the couple built substantial equestrian facilities for their own use, including a stable block with capacity for at least 28 horses, a large indoor arena and outdoor facilities, all of which they used to train their own horses for international competitions. The appellant valuation officer entered the equestrian facilities at the house in the 2010 non-domestic rating list as stables and premises with a rateable value of £30,000 with effect from 1 March 2013. The respondent made a proposal to alter the rating list on the grounds that the rateable value shown in the list was inaccurate. That proposal was rejected by the appellant and referred to the Valuation Tribunal for England (VTE) for consideration. The VTE determined that the equestrian facilities should be deleted from the 2010 rating list on the grounds that they were domestic rather than non-domestic property. The appellant appealed
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
(1) Having regard to the definition of “domestic property” in section 66(1) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, the question whether the equestrian facilities at Bourne Hill House were domestic property, and therefore not rateable, or non-domestic property which fell to be rated, turned on whether the facilities were a “yard, garden, outhouse or other appurtenance belonging to or enjoyed with” the house. The house was used wholly for the purposes of living accommodation, and it was not suggested that the equestrian facilities were, or included, a yard or outhouse. The question was whether they came within section 66(1)(b) as being an “appurtenance belonging to or enjoyed with” the house.
(2) The word “appurtenance” was a legal term used in conveyancing and in property statutes. It was derived from the same Latin root as the more familiar word “appertain”, meaning to relate to or to be associated with, and in general it connoted property which belonged to or went with a house, flat or other building. The general concept was clear enough, namely that an appurtenance was something which was so closely associated with the principal subject matter of a lease or conveyance, physically and functionally, that it could be regarded as “part and parcel” of it, so that a reference to the principal subject would be understood as including the appurtenance. The question was whether the land was properly to be described as an appurtenance in all the circumstances of the case, taking into account the nature and function of the buildings and other facilities themselves, their proximity to each other and the general layout of the site. What was appurtenant to a building, including a house, or within its curtilage, would depend to some extent on the house or building itself. In general, stables were a category of building which fell within the scope of appurtenant property: Attorney-General ex rel. Sutcliffe v Calderdale Borough Council (1983) 46 P & CR 399, Skerritts of Nottingham Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment [2000] 2 PLR 84; [2001] QB 59 and Martin v Hewitt [2003] RA 275 considered.
(3) In the present case, the professionalism of the respondent and her husband did not prevent the stable block and indoor arena, large though they were, from being intimately associated with Bourne Hill House so as reasonably to be regarded as “part and parcel” with the house and as constituting an integral whole with it and the other buildings around it. On the facts, the stables and other equestrian facilities were appurtenances. No fence or other barrier separated the equestrian buildings from the house, and together with the barn and groom’s accommodation they were all grouped around the lawn. They were not divided from each other by the trees which grew between them. The visual impression was that the whole group was enclosed within a wider boundary of trees. The glazed walls of the arena moderated the impression it presented by allowing views through to those boundary trees. Access to the whole group was by the common drive. The stable and arena building was large, but so too was the house. More important than the size of the facilities was their function of accommodating horses belonging to the owners of a private family home, which they kept for their own and their family’s pleasure including for competition. The facilities at the house were not in fact used for any commercial purpose or to provide facilities for visitors. Non-domestic rates were a tax on property, not on the activities conducted from property, and the relative success of the owner of the property in pursuing those activities was not relevant to the basis on which the property itself was assessed. It was clear that the house had enjoyed the use of substantial equestrian facilities for a considerable time. The buildings demolished to make way for the current facilities were not new and had been replaced by buildings fulfilling the same purpose, albeit at a higher level. No historical discontinuity prevented the modern facilities from being appurtenant to the house.
Sarabjit Singh QC (instructed by HMRC Solicitors) appeared for the appellant; Cain Ormondroyd (instructed by Direct Access) appeared for the respondent.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
