Butterley Company Ltd v Tasker
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE HOLROYD PEARCE,LORD JUSTICE HARMAN,MR JUSTICE SACHS |
| Judgment Date | 17 January 1961 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1961] EWCA Civ J0117-2 |
| Date | 17 January 1961 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
[1961] EWCA Civ J0117-2
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
Lord Justice Holroyd Pearce
Lord Justice Harman and
Mr Justice Sachs.
(Valuation Officer).
MR MAURICE LYELL, Q.C. and MR W.J. GILBERT (with them Mr. John Taylor) (instructed "by Messrs Thicknesse & Hull) appeared on "behalf of the Appellants.
THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL (The Rt. Hon. Sir Jocelyn Sinon, Q.C., M.P.) and MR RAYMOND PHILLIPS (instructed "by the Solicitor, Inland Revenue) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
The Butterley Company Limited appealed to the Lands Tribunal in respect of various assessments on various parts of their undertaking sporadically situated on a large "block of land some two miles wide which the Company owns. The Company contended on that appeal that the whole undertaking comprised one single factory and should be regarded as one hereditament. The Lands Tribunal rejected the contention.
The Company started in the 18th century with the Butterley Works which are at the west end of their land for the purposes of mining under the land and making iron. The Works now comprise in the main a foundry, a machine shop, a fitting shop, and a constructional department. A few years later the Company acquired the land on the east side and erected works which are called Codnor Park Forge and Wagon Works. It later constructed a railway line about two miles long to connect the two works. It constructed private roads which run to various parts of its land and at certain points join up with public highways outside its land. These private roads have toll gates where they connect with the public highway, and notice boards inform the public that the roads are private. Tolls are collected from vehicles but there is no hindrance to foot passengers.
Most of the land is used for agricultural purposes, but there are eight areas where buildings have been erected for the company's purposes. These areas have been separately assessed.
The Revenue conceded before the Lands Tribunal that section 3(3) of the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act, 1928, applied to two areas, the Butterley Works and the Pattern Store and Cinder Breaker, on the ground that they were joined together by a tunnel containing a footway and railway, and that therefore they should be assessed as one hereditament. With regard to all the other areas the separate assessments were upheld.
The Appellants now seek only to challenge that decision in respect of one area described on the plan and in the Case as the New Offices. It is contended that they should be included as one hereditament with the Butterley Works and the Pattern Store and Cinder Breaker.
The New Offices are described in the Case as follows: "This area represents the old site of Butterley Hall and part of its grounds in which have been erected certain buildings. These buildings and Butterley Hall are used for the purpose of offices for the general administration of the whole group of companies connected with the Butterley Company Limited, a group whose activities extend far beyond the works concerned in this appeal. The offices deal with practically everything, except wages, for both Butterley and Codnor Park Works". The New Offices are about 150 yards distant from the works. A private road runs along the west side of the works, traverses agricultural land for 150 yards, runs alongside the west side of the offices and finally joins up with a coach road which is a private road terminating at one end on the public highway bounding the south of the company's land, and at the other end in a, "T" junction with the private road that runs right across the company's land from east to west.
It is argued for the Appellants that the works and offices being connected together by this road, are a single geographical unit used for a common purpose and should, as a matter of law, be treated as one hereditament. The Tribunal, it is said, erred in law in treating the decision in Reed & Co. v. The Rating Officer for Maidstone, 2 De-rating Appeals, page 141, as deciding that two pieces of land joined by a private read should not be treated as one hereditament or as contiguous properties. Further, the Tribunal is said to have erred in law in that there was no evidence on which it could treat the works and offices as other than a single hereditament.
The Case does not specifically deal with the 150 yards of road now in question. It deals with the general contention that the roads linked all the areas as one hereditament, and specifically refers to the east-west road which was said to link the two areas furthest apart. It says this: "The private road link is, I think, clearly part of neither hereditament and is not indeed treated as a ratable hereditament. Whether it should be so treated is a question which I am not called upon to determine in this appeal, but it would at least appear possible that these ways may have "become public highways for all purposes other than those of mechanically propelled vehicles and the question of their readability may not be free from difficulty. It is, I think, at least clear that, if rated, they would be separate hereditaments from and could not be said to be part of either the Butterley Works or those at Codnor Park. It is, I think, also clear from the judgment of Mr. Justice Avory in A.E. Reed & Co. Ltd. v. Maidstone Rating Officer, 2 De-rating Appeals at page, 144 that a mere connection by a private road or private right of way will not result in contiguity". A later passage reads: "It follows from what I have already said that, in my view, the New Offices, the Civil Engineering Shop Department, and the Stables which can only be said to be connected with either of the Works by the. Private roads must each be treated as separate hereditaments"
The evidence exhibited to the Case in reference to these roads, which a witness described as the Butterley private road system, points to the fact that they are still private roads, and that any suggestion of dedication derived from the free passage of pedestrians is negatived by the notices exhibited. The words "it would at least appear possible", I venture to think, should be more accurately expressed as "it would appear extremely unlikely". But this was not a deciding factor. The real ground on which the Tribunal relied in coming to its decision was the fact that, if rated, they would be separate hereditaments from and could not be said to be part of either Butterley Works or Codnor Park Works. By parity of reasoning the Tribunal was also saying that they would be separate hereditaments from and could not be said to be part of the New Offices. That is the ground on which the Tribunal decided that the roads could not be an adequate link for making two hereditaments contiguous.
The subsidiary reason (and it is no more) founded on the judgment of Mr. Justice Avory in A. E. Reed & Co. Ltd. v. Maidstone Rating Officer ( supra) is open to some criticism. The Court held in that case that an exclusive right of way over 17 ft. of intervening land did not make the properties contiguous. In an obiter dictum Mr. Justice Avory seems not to have appreciated that in the case of Tovil Mill there was an intervening 60 yards of public highway, and, in discussing the matters which must have affected the Recorder's mind, he says: "It cannot make any difference whether the private road or right of way is 17 ft. or 70 ft. in length".
With respect, I do not understand him to have gone so...
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