Borough of Stepney v John Walker & Sons Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Warrington of Clyffe,Lord Tomlin,Lord Russell of Killowen,Lord Macmillam |
| Judgment Date | 06 March 1934 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1934] UKHL J0306-1 |
| Date | 06 March 1934 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1934] UKHL J0306-1
Lord Tomlin.
Lord Warrington of Clyffe.
Lord Russell of Killowen.
Lord Macmillan.
Lord Wright.
House of Lords
After hearing Counsel as well on Tuesday the 30th day of January last, as on Thursday the 1st and Friday the 2d, days of February last, upon the Petition and Appeal of the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney (acting as the Rating Authority for the Parish of Stepney), of the Municipal Offices, Raine Street, Old Gravel Lane, E.1, in the County of London, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely an Order of His Majesty's Court of Appeal, of the 29th of November 1932, might be reviewed before His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied, or altered, or that the Petitioners might have such other relief in the premises as to His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, might seem meet; as also upon the printed Case of John Walker and Sons, Limited, lodged in answer to the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of His Majesty the King assembled. That the said Order of His Majesty's Court of Appeal, of the 29th day of November 1932, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Reversed, and that the Order of the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, of the 22d day of July 1932, thereby set aside, be, and the same is hereby, Restored: And it is further Ordered, That the Respondents do pay, or cause to be paid, to the said Appellants, the Costs incurred by them in the Court of Appeal and also the Costs incurred by them in respect of the said Appeal to this House, the amount of such last-mentioned Costs to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments: And it is also further Ordered, That the Cause be, and the same is hereby, remitted back to the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, to do therein as shall be just and consistent with this Judgment.
My Lords,
I have had the advantage of considering the opinion which is about to be read by my noble and learned friend Lord Wright. In the reasoning and conclusions of that opinion I concur. As, however, a different view was taken in the Court of Appeal, I desire to say that the conclusions in question do not in my opinion in any way involve or imply the restriction of the recognised scope of the prerogative writ of mandamus.
The position of the Appellants in this case was at the material time such as in my view to make it impossible to say that under the relevant Acts there was default on their part in performance of any public duty.
It is I think plain that at the time when the Appellants settled the Quinquennial Valuation List 1930 it was not their duty to put the Respondents' hereditaments into Part II of such list. On the contrary as matters then stood it was their duty not to do so. The hereditaments were not in the Special List, and no application had been made to the Appellants by the Respondents to place the hereditaments in Part II of the Quinquennial Valuation List.
The subsequent decision of the High Court related not to the form of the Quinquennial Valuation List but to the form of the Special List. The considerations which respectively governed the compilation of the two lists were not necessarily the same, and in any case if at the date when the Quinquennial Valuation List was settled it was the duty of the Appellants to place the hereditaments in Part I of that list, the subsequent decision of the High Court upon the Special List could not in my opinion ex post facto convert an act which when done was in strict compliance with the statutory duty of the Appellants into a default remediable by writ of mandamus.
I think therefore that the Appeal should be allowed.
My Lords,
The Appellants are the rating authority of the Borough of Stepney. The Respondents are the occupiers of four hereditaments within that rating area. It is now no longer in dispute that the four hereditaments in question are in fact "industrial hereditaments", and would properly have been included as such in Part II of the Quinquennial Valuation List, 1930, had the Respondents taken the proper steps to obtain a revision of the List. Under the circumstances hereinafter referred to however they appeared in Part I of the List as deposited by the Appellants after it had been finally approved by the Assessment Committee of the rating area. The order of the Court of Appeal (Lord Hanworth, M.R., and Slesser and Romer, L.J.J.), from which the present appeal is brought, was dated the 29th November, 1932, and by it the Court (reversing an order of the King's Bench Division dated the 22nd July, 1932) ordered that a Writ of Mandamus should issue directed to the Appellants as the Rating Authority for the Parish of Stepney commanding them to insert the four hereditaments in question in Part II of the Quinquennial Valuation List, 1930, or such list as was then in force.
Two main questions arise for decision: I. Whether under the circumstances of the present case the Appellants were either (1) at the time when they made and deposited the Quinquennial Valuation List for 1930, or (2) at any material time thereafter under a duty enforceable by a Writ of Mandamus to insert the hereditaments in question in Part II of the List; and II: Whether the neglect of the Respondents to avail themselves of the specific modes of relief provided by the Valuation (Metropolis) Act, 1869, disentitled them from obtaining the Writ of Mandamus above mentioned.
My Lords, the circumstances of the case and the modes of relief provided by the above mentioned act have been so fully stated and explained by my noble and learned friend Lord Wright whose opinion I have read, that I might simply express my concurrence in his conclusions and say no more, but I propose, out of deference to the members of the Court of Appeal whose order we are reversing, to state quite shortly my reasons for answering both the above questions in favour of the Appellants.
As to question I. By Section 70 (4) of the Local Government Act, 1929, it is provided that notwithstanding anything in the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act, 1928, no hereditament shall, for the purpose of any valuation list which will come into force after the appointed day—which for this purpose was the 1st October, 1929—be treated as an industrial hereditament unless it was so treated for the purpose of the last preceding valuation list, except upon a claim that it ought to be so treated being made to the Rating Authority by the owner or occupier in the prescribed form. At the time the Quinquennial List was settled by the Assessment Committee and the Appellants the hereditaments in question did not appear as industrial hereditaments in the "last preceding valuation" whether this be treated as the Special Valuation List under the Act of 1928 or the last Quinquennial Valuation List and it was therefore the duty of the Appellants not to treat the hereditaments as industrial hereditaments except upon a claim made by the Respondents, and no such claim was made. I have some doubt whether, having regard to the opening words of the subsection the special valuation for the purposes of the Act of 1928 can be regarded as the last preceding valuation, but even if it can be so regarded the hereditaments in question were not at the material date treated as industrial hereditaments for the purposes of that valuation, the order of the Court of Quarter Sessions excluding them from that category being then in force not having been set aside by the subsequent order of the King's Bench Division. I cannot bring myself to understand how the last-mentioned order can have such a retroactive force as to turn into a breach of duty by the Rating Authority conduct which up to that time had been in strict accordance with it. In my opinion therefore, question I should be answered in the Appellants' favour.
As to question II. In the Act of 1869 a complete and easily understood code is laid down for the purpose of enabling objections either by a ratepayer or other specified persons to acts of the assessment committee or the rating authority to be considered and dealt with either by those bodies themselves or in case of necessity by judicial authority. In the present case all necessary notices were given so that the Respondents were at all times in a position effectually to obtain relief under the statutory provisions. It is difficult to understand why the Respondents deliberately, as it is said, abstained from resorting to the statutory provisions. They say they did so because until the decision of Quarter Sessions in reference to the Special List under the Act of 1928 had been set aside, an appeal in respect of the Quinquennial List would probably have failed. But, assuming that to be so, it can afford no excuse for having abstained from taking steps which would at least have kept their claims alive. In fact it was not until April, 1932, long after the Quinquennial List had come into force, that they raised their present claim.
In my opinion this is one of those cases in which the Legislature has provided suitable means whereby persons aggrieved by the action of the rating authorities can obtain the removal of that grievance, and I am of opinion that when that is so it must be inferred that those means are intended to be exclusive—see Rex v. City of London Assessment Committee, 1907 2 K.B. 764. On this point I agree with Romer L.J. We were told that it is hard that for the rest of the Quinquennial period the Respondents will be deprived of the benefits of the Acts of 1928 and 1929....
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