Rating – Non-domestic hereditament – Car-parking spaces – Respondent householders using spaces in nearby car park under licence from local council – Appellant valuation officer entering spaces in non-domestic rating list – Whether spaces constituting domestic property within section 66(1) of Local Government Finance Act 1988 so as to be exempt from rating – Whether “private storage premises used wholly or mainly for the storage of articles of domestic use” within section 66(1)(d) – Appeal allowed
The respondents were the residents of terraced houses for which car parking was not immediately available. They therefore used parking spaces in a nearby car park pursuant to annual licences granted by its owners, the district council. The car park contained 69 spaces, of which 23 were licensed to businesses and 46 to residential licensees. The appellant valuation officer entered each of the spaces in the non-domestic rating list at a rateable value of £230, treating each as a separate hereditament rather than as parts of a single car-park hereditament occupied by the council.
The respondents appealed to the Valuation Tribunal. They contended that their spaces should be removed from the non-domestic list because they constituted domestic property within the meaning of section 66(1) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 and therefore exempt from rating.
The tribunal agreed. It noted that section 66(1)(c) covered private garages but not car-parking spaces, whereas the equivalent provision in the Scottish legislation also covered car-parking spaces or “stances”. The tribunal considered it implausible that parliament had intended to exempt Scottish car-parking spaces but not those in England and Wales. It reasoned that the intention of the English legislation had been to include car-parking spaces within section 66(1)(d) as “private storage premises used wholly or mainly for the storage of articles of domestic use”.
The appellant appealed, contending that a car was not an “article of domestic use” for the purpose of that provision. He argued that that was recognised by the separate provision in section 66(1)(c) for the accommodation of a private motor vehicle, which, in failing to include any reference to private parking spaces, could not be assumed to have made an unintended omission.
Held: The appeal was allowed.
The definition of domestic property in section 66(1) had a clear structure: para (a) contained the primary element of living accommodation; para (b) added appurtenances enjoyed with the living accommodation; and paras (c) and (d) covered two other classes of property that, although falling outside the curtilage of the living accommodation, and therefore incapable of being appurtenances, were none the less brought within the definition. That structure strongly suggested that the two specific additions in paras (c) and (d) were separate and did not overlap. Moreover, the words used in those paragraphs gave rise to the clear inference that the parking of cars was not a matter with which para (d) was concerned. A car-parking space would not normally be described as “storage premises” and cars would not normally be described as “articles of domestic use”. Further, since para (c) dealt expressly with premises used for the accommodation of private motor vehicles, there was no justification for treating para (d) as also doing so. Therefore, as a matter of construction, para (d) did not extend to car-parking spaces. The entries in the rating list relating to the respondents’ spaces should therefore be restored.
It was not a purpose of section 66(1) that car-parking spaces should constitute domestic property and a comparison with the Scottish provisions did not lead to that conclusion. Those provisions included carports and parking stances as well as garages within the definition of private car-parking premises, while at the same time imposing a restriction that the use of such premises had to be ancillary to the residential use of residential property. Section 66(1)(c) was both narrower, in that it referred only to garages, and wider, by not requiring the use of the garage to be ancillary to living accommodation; para (d) similarly did not require the private storage premises to be ancillary to living accommodation. If para (d) were construed so that a car used by a person for transport to and from his home was an article of domestic use and a parking space was private storage premises, the effect would be that all parking spaces anywhere for such cars would constitute domestic property whether or not they were ancillary to living accommodation, provided only that they were “private”. Properly construed, the legislation did not have that effect.
Timothy Morshead (instructed by the legal department of HMRC) appeared for the appellant; the respondents did not appear and were not represented.
Sally Dobson, barrister
