The Court of Appeal has rejected a claim that a five-storey building in west London used for short-term holiday letting should not have been added to the rating list until the next list, scheduled for 2017.
Though the holiday letting business has been carried on at the property, 8 Collingham Road, London SW5, since 1989, it was not included in the 1990 rating list or any subsequent one until it was entered into the 2005 list by amendment in March 2011.
BMC Properties and Management, its owner, claimed that the Valuation Tribunal for England and the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) had been wrong to find that the alteration to the 2005 list took effect from the date the list came into force, 1 April 2015.
It claimed that the effective date could be no earlier than 22 March 2011, when the alteration was made, and made the more fundamental argument that the valuation officer had no power under the Local Government Finance Act 1988 to make an alteration during the currency of a rating list.
BMC maintained that the property’s inclusion should wait for the new list in 2017.
However, Patten LJ dismissed BMC’s appeal and upheld the earlier rulings.
He said that the inaccuracy in the 2005 list was “reasonably ascertainable” when the alteration was made in 2011 and that, while it was not possible to identify precisely when commercial use of the premises began, it was “common ground that it had started long before 1 April 2005”.
The property, divided into 19 self-contained units, was assessed as having a rateable value of £62,500.
BMC Properties & Management Ltd v Jackson (VO) Court of Appeal (Patten and King LJJ and Dame Janet Smith) 18 December 2015
Alison Foster QC and Myriam Stacey (instructed by Collyer Bristow LLP) for the appellant
Hui Ling McCarthy (instructed by Solicitor to HM Revenue & Customs) for the respondent
