Compensation — Ransom value — Land taken for highway — Access provided for adjoining development land — Whether Pointe Gourde principle applied — Whether rule (3) applied — Whether adequate reasoning for award of Lands Tribunal — Award remitted to tribunal
The respondent had been the owner of a parcel of land at Bearsted, Kent, the subject of the Kent County Council (New Cut/Bearsted Road Improvement) Compulsory Purchase Order 1983. The appellant acquiring authority took possession of 0.86 of an acre under the order and a further 0.97 of an acre of additional land following a counternotice by the respondent under section 53 of the Land Compensation Act 1973.
In 1982 planning permission was granted for some 1,750 dwellings on land to the south of the two parcels, and the various developers having interests in this land agreed phasing and arrangements for a suitable access for the development. The order under which the respondent’s land was taken was a consequence of these arrangements, and a roundabout was constructed on the order land to effect the most convenient access to the development land. The Lands Tribunal (W H Rees Esq FRICS) ([1988] EGCS 32) awarded the respondent £500,000 for the order land and £150,000 for the additional land on the basis that the order land had potential as an access and a ransom value. The acquiring authority appealed, contending that the award did not observe the Pointe Gourde principle or rule (3) of section 5 of the Land Compensation Act 1961; and the award for the additional land had no basis in evidence. The respondent challenged the award for the order land, as it involved an unexplained rejection of one of the respondent’s valuations that had put the value of the land at £5,991,000.
Held The questions of law were answered as follows and the awards were remitted to the tribunal.
1. If a premium value is “entirely due to the scheme underlying the acquisition”, then it must be disregarded under the Pointe Gourde principle; if it was pre-existent to the acquisition, it must be regarded. To ignore a pre-existent value would be to expropriate it without compensation and it would contravene the fundamental principle of equivalence: Horn v Sunderland Corporation [1941] 2 KB 26. The tribunal was entitled to identify the scheme as the roundabout and associated works and to find that the order land had a particular value prior to the scheme.
2. The prefatory words “special suitability or adaptability” to rule (3) were not satisfied. In terms of the rule, the order land may have been the most suitable land for an access to the development, but it was not specially suitable for that purpose: most suitable does not correspond with specially suitable. Accordingly any enhanced value could not be ignored by the rule.
3. The award of the tribunal for the adjoining land of £150,000 had no basis on the evidence and had to be remitted.
4. Having accepted that the order land had a premium value, the tribunal’s reasons for the award of £500,000 were in part inexplicable; this award was also remitted.
Malcolm Spence QC and Adrian Trevelyan-Thomas (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard, for the solicitor to Kent County Council) appeared for the appellant; and Robin Purchas QC and Meyric Lewis (instructed by Hallett & Co, of Ashford) appeared for the respondent.
