Rating — Hereditaments used for processing feed and slaughtered birds — Whether “occupied together with” and “used solely in connection with” operations in an agricultural building — Whether buildings rateable
The second respondents, Buxted Poultry Ltd, occupy a poultry processing factory at Thirsk, North Yorkshire, and a provender mill and premises at Dalton Airfield, Topcliffe, North Yorkshire. Buxted Poultry Ltd have some 67 poultry breeding and rearing farms which included 48 poultry rearing farms. The provender mill produces 140,000 tonnes of feed pellets annually of which all but 6-8% is delivered to the breeding and rearing farms. The poultry factory is used for the processing of poultry from the rearing farms. Each live bird is attached, live, to an overhead conveyor, passed through a stunning and killing area and its giblets are removed. Some birds are air chilled; the bulk are chilled in iced water, a proportion “basted” by the injection of liquid butter, brined to whiten the external meat for aesthetic reasons and packaged.
In these two appeals by the valuation officer, the issue was whether for the purposes of excluding the buildings from being rated as agricultural buildings within the meaning of sections 1 and 2 of the Rating Act 1971, they were “occupied together with” and “used solely in connection with the operations” carried on at the rearing and breeding farms of the second respondents.
Held The appeals were dismissed; the local valuation court was entitled to uphold the second respondents’ appeals and to find that the buildings were agricultural buildings.
Whether or not the maxim de minimis non curat lex can be applied in law was not material; the words “substantial part” in section 1(2) of the 1971 Act are a relative term. The 6-8% of the total time during which the provender mill was used for processing feed not used on the second respondents’ farms could not be regarded as a substantial part of the total time.
There was a functional link between the provender mill and the farms it served despite the distances between them of up to 100 miles. The premises were “occupied together with” these farms and a geographical test had no merit. On the facts, the processing factory was used solely in connection with agricultural operations on the 48 rearing farms and accordingly that building was also an agricultural building.
David Mole (instructed by the Solicitor of Inland Revenue) appeared for the appellant valuation officer; Christopher Cochrane QC (instructed by the chief executive to the Hambleton District Council) appeared for the first respondents, the rating authority; and Guy Roots QC (instructed by Pitts Tucker & Co) appeared for the second respondents.
