Source: http://manuals.voa.gov.uk/corporate/publications/Manuals/RatingManual/RatingManualVolume2/sect12/b-rat-man-vol2-s12.html
Timestamp: 2018-04-23 09:08:42
Document Index: 462210097

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 1', 'art 2', 'art 3', 'art 4', 'art 5', 'art 6', 'art 7', 'art 8', 'art 9', 'art 10', 'art 11', 'art 12']

Rating Manual - Volume 2 - Section 12: Hereditaments Valued by the Central Valuation Officer
Part 1 Network Rail Infrastructure Limited (the national rail network) and London Underground Limited
Part 2 Docklands Light Railway and The Tyne and Wear Metro
Part 3 Communications (e.g. British Telecommunications Plc)
Part 4 National and Regional Gas Transportation (e.g. National Grid Gas PLC)
Part 5 Local Gas Transportation (the occupations of one “independent gas transporter” or LGT is not designated in the central list and is therefore assessed in local lists in the usual way)
Part 6 Gas Meters
Part 7 Electricity Transmission (e.g. National Grid Electricity Transmission PLC)
Part 8 Electricity Distribution (the occupations of “independent distribution network operators” or IDNO’s are not designated in the central list and are therefore assessed in local lists in the usual way)
Part 9 Electricity Meters
Part 10 Water Supply (e.g. Thames Water)
Part 11 This designation was in respect of The British Waterways Board’s (BWB) canals. BWB’s functions were transferred to the Canal & River Trust on 2 July 2012 and the central list entries were deleted. New regulations prescribed the Canal & River Trust’s occupation for the whole of England (in similar terms to the previous BWB designation) into the Birmingham City Council Rating List.
Part 12 Pipelines
4) Secondly, there is a use test. The Regulations for most classes limit the scope of the central list assessment to the purposes of the designated person (company) for example, ‘railway purposes’ or ‘acting as an electricity distributor' or ‘water undertaker’. Because of this limitation there will be “excepted hereditaments which although occupied by the designated person (company) are not used for the purposes that are needed for them to be included in the central list assessment.
Public utilities (with the exception of sewers, which became exempt in the 19th century) have always been assessable to rates, originally employing conventional valuation methods. In practice this involved use of the profits method, which calculated an amount which was deemed to represent the annual rental value of the whole undertaking (referred to as the "cumulo" value) by reference to the receipts and expenditure of the undertaking.
The remaining classes of public utilities continued to be assessed by the profits method (now more usually referred to as "the receipts and expenditure method") until after the Second World War.
2.2 Between 1948 & 1990
The identification of the hereditament.
The initial cumulo RVs of the undertakings.
The method of altering those cumulo RVs to reflect changes to the hereditaments during the life of the valuation list.
Means of apportioning the RVs between rating areas and rating districts.
Certain types of hereditament were "excepted" from the formula provisions; these continued to be valued and entered in Valuation Lists in the usual way. All other hereditaments occupied by the relevant undertakings were then exempted from inclusion in any rate. Finally the provisions created a notional hereditament in each rating district and prescribed a method of apportioning a rateable value to each out of a basic rateable value for each National and Regional Board. These notional hereditaments were shown in a separately identified section of each Valuation List.
The system of formula rating described above operated for the revaluations carried out in 1956, 1963 and 1973. The General Rate Act 1967 had been amended by various measures in the 1980's to allow for the possibility of competing undertakings, but in the absence of any revaluation, the measures never took effect.
1990, 1995 & 2000 central rating lists
i. Special rules apply to the maintenance of the lists.
ii. The lists are not maintained on the Central Database.
Iii The hereditaments are of an unusual nature and in many cases spread countrywide.
A description of the hereditament and its use.
The rateable value involved.
Particulars of any market transaction underlying the change.
The definitions of office premises and office purposes are quite straightforward, but note that in the latter the use of the word “includes” on two occasions indicates that what follows is intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive, and any question as to what constitutes office premises should be approached in that light. The Lands Tribunal has held (Halliday (VO) -v- British Railways Board - [1994 RA 297]) that accommodation ancillary to offices but not itself used as offices, e.g. stationery stores, broom cupboards, mess rooms, lavatories and corridors do not detract from the description “wholly or mainly used for office purposes”.
It is clear from Goodwin (VO) -v- Waltham Forest BC and London Electricity Board [1975 LT RA 53] that in such circumstances it is correct to assess separately the excepted hereditaments. The Regulations make no exceptions to this rule in respect of offices of any particular kind, but in practice it has been found desirable to operate a de minimis concession in respect of certain small offices to avoid singling out for separate assessment small areas of low-value ancillary office accommodation which normal valuation practice would treat as indistinguishable from the main accommodation with which it is associated.
A typical example is the foreman's office partitioned out of warehouse or workshop accommodation. Such accommodation may be disregarded when considering the existence or extent of any excepted hereditament.
On occasions central list ratepayers have sought to persuade VOs that a distinction should be made between administrative & managerial offices on the one hand and so-called "operational offices" (e.g used by engineers, technical operatives and similar personnel) on the other. The Regulations make no such distinction, and none should be conceded.
Where canteens, sports fields, pavilions and club houses are established as being occupied by the designated person, they are to be regarded as being assessed in the central lists, since they do not constitute excepted hereditaments. Occasionally it will be found that all or part of a clubhouse is in the rateable occupation, not of the designated person, but of a staff association or sports club, in which case it should be the subject of a local list entry. Such questions should be decided upon the facts of each case and in accordance with the normal principles of rateable occupation set out at Rating Manual Volume 4 Section 2 paragraph 3.2.
Halliday (VO) -v- British Railways Board - [1994 RA 297] concerned the case of a railway booking office situated on the first floor of a two storey shopping mall adjacent to a main line railway station. The mall had been developed on the site of the old station forecourt. The office was located in a modified shop unit at the head of the escalators and adjacent to the main pedestrian access to the footbridge serving the platforms. The levels below consisted of another shop unit and a public highway running in a tunnel. The accommodation was used for ticket sales and also for ticket collectors to account for money collected on trains.
The hereditament was office premises.
In the context of the hereditament, “land in general” meant use as a shopping mall.
The land comprised in the ticket office was more like land in general than it was like land used for the purposes of carrying on a statutory undertaking. It was therefore not operational land.
The ticket office was therefore an excepted hereditament and should be shown in the local rating list.
Barratclough (VO) -v- Tees and Hartlepool Port Authority - [2004 RA 1] concerned the case of the headquarters office building of the port authority which was situated in a square which contained a mixture of commercial and professional offices, and also other uses, close to the main railway station in Middlesborough. It was purpose-built at the end of the 19th century, and incorporated many special features for its purpose, including an extremely large boardroom which was the subject of a Grade 2* listing. The building was located approximately 400 yards from the main gates to the former Middlesborough Docks, which were in the course of re-development. It remained centrally located for the direction of operations at all the authority’s ports, which were distributed over an area of several square miles. The Tribunal held that the land was not operational in nature and that the building did not form part of the dock hereditament.
10.1 IPPs to alter Local Lists - Designated Person’s Central List assessment calculated by statutory formula (Applicable to 1990, 1995 & 2000 lists only)
In deciding questions of value, it is considered that the correct approach is one of apportionment. Since the division into separate hereditaments is an artificial one brought about by the operation of statute (as was formerly the case where boundaries intervened) no allowance should be conceded for fragmentation or shared access. The old form of description used in such circumstances, “part also in....”, should not however be used.