Claim for compensation — Noise and traffic on motorway — Valuation date in 1981 — Serious underestimate of traffic prediction on valuation date — Traffic at higher levels than predicted — Whether Bwllfa principle applied to admit later estimate of traffic levels — Post valuation date evidence not to be rejected — Interim award — Further evidence required of 1981 traffic predictions and values
The claimant is the owner of a house in Chertsey, Surrey, and claimed compensation under Part I of the Land Compensation Act 1973 for depreciation resulting from a section of the M25 motorway opened on October 9 1980. The house stands some 160 m north-east of the motorway and the intervening ground is part dense wood and part open fields. It was agreed that the valuation date was October 9 1981 and on that date the value of the house was £125,000, without the effect of the specified factors generated by the use of the motorway. The claimant claimed 20% of this figure as compensation; the authority offered 6%.
In supporting his figure the claimant relied on his experience of noise; he also relied on the Bwllfa principle to justify the use of actual traffic counts after the date of the valuation rather than projected figures estimated before that date. It was the claimant’s submission that the traffic figures relied on by the authority were estimates prepared in 1976; that under section 4(2) of the Land Compensation Act 1973 account is to be taken on the valuation date of any intensification that may then be reasonably expected of the use of the motorway; and that under the Bwllfa principle conjecture as to the estimates of traffic in 1981 should give way to the traffic flows now known to exist.
Held The Bwllfa principle can have little application to this case as compensation has to be ascertained at a particular date, on facts at that date, on prices current at that date and on any intensification of traffic use that might reasonably have been anticipated at that date; traffic counts and values after the valuation date cannot be relied on. If that were wrong in law, the claimant’s figure of 20% would have been accepted.
From the limited evidence available at the valuation date, it could be supposed that the projected figures prepared in 1976 were not only underestimates but were considerable underestimates. Therefore little weight can be attached to the evidence of agreed assessments of compensation on other properties that appear to have been made in the light of the 1976 estimates of traffic flow. Evidence that postdates the valuation date should not be rejected if it would be helpful in determining the accuracy or otherwise of the assumptions that have to be made at that date. For these reasons the valuations submitted by both parties were not accepted and further evidence should be heard as to the actual traffic flows and the best estimates of future traffic flows as at the valuation date, and the effect of these on the market value of the house at that time.
Bwllfa and Merthyr Dare Steam Collieries (1891) Ltd v Pontypridd Waterworks Company
[1903] AC 426 not followed.
The claimant appeared in person; and W Robert Griffiths (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the compensating authority and called Michael Jacobs ARICS, deputy district valuer and valuation officer.