Commissioner of Valuation for Northern Ireland v Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Chancellor,Lord Hodson,Lord Upjohn,Lord Pearson,Lord Diplock |
| Judgment Date | 23 July 1969 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1969] UKHL J0723-1 |
| Date | 23 July 1969 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1969] UKHL J0723-1
Lord Chancellor
Lord Hodson
Lord Upjohn
Lord Pearson
Lord Diplock
House of Lords
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Commissioner of Valuation for Northern Ireland against Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education and others, that the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Tuesday the 3d, as on Wednesday the 4th and Thursday the 5th, days of June last, upon the Petition and Appeal of the Commissioner of Valuation for Northern Ireland, of Armagh House, Ormeau Avenue, in the County of the City of Belfast, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland of the 28th of June 1968, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied or altered, or that the Petitioner might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, might seem meet; as also upon the Case of Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education and Portora Housing Society 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 Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland, of the 28th day of June 1968, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Set Aside except as to Costs: And it is further Ordered, That the Question of Law contained in paragraph 6 of the Case Stated relating to the six hereditaments in Castle Lane, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, be, and the same is hereby, answered in the Negative: And it is further Ordered, That the Question of Law contained in paragraph 11 of the Case Stated relating to the hereditament known as "Stepaside", be, and the same is hereby, answered in the Affirmative: And it is further Ordered, That the Appellant do pay, or cause to be paid, to the said Respondents the Costs incurred by them in respect of the said Appeal to this House, the amount of such 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 Lands Tribunal for Northern Ireland, to do therein as shall be just and consistent with this Judgment.
My Lords,
I have had the advantage of reading the speeches of my noble and learned friends, Lord Upjohn and Lord Diplock, and I agree with them in allowing the appeal in respect of the six houses in Castle Lane and dismissing the appeal in respect of "Stepaside".
My Lords,
I have had the advantage of reading the speeches of my noble and learned friends, Lord Upjohn and Lord Diplock, and I agree with them in allowing the appeal in respect of the six houses in Castle Lane and dismissing the appeal in respect of "Stepaside".
My Lords,
The facts in this case are so fully and clearly set out in the decision dated 10th February, 1967, by the Lands Tribunal for Northern Ireland that I shall make no attempt to recapitulate them. This appeal is concerned with rating, which is purely a creature of statute, but it must be noted that the relevant statutes for Northern Ireland, Scotland and then England and Wales, differ in many material respects, so the decided cases bearing upon the interpretation of one set of statutory provisions can only be applied with much caution to another.
But all relevant rating legislation of these countries has one basic method of rating in common: it is the occupier of the rated hereditament who is assessed to and liable for payment of the rates. This case is in the end concerned only with the question—Who for the purposes of the relevant statutes is the occupier?—so that some of the authorities decided in relation to the rating statutes of other countries may be consulted, though still with caution.
There are two separate questions in this appeal.
( a) Six houses occupied by masters in Castle Lane within the precincts of the school;
( b) The Vice-Principal's house "Stepaside" similarly within those precincts.
I propose to consider first the case of the six houses, and there is no difference between any of them.
It is important to note that although each of the six houses is within the general perimeter of the school buildings, they are not treated as part of a general hereditament comprising those buildings but each is separately rated as a separate hereditament. Each of those houses is occupied by a master with his family for the purposes of his beneficial occupation. Each occupant is properly described, not only colloquially but for many legal purposes, as the occupier of the hereditament in question. Thus, it cannot be doubted that each master is in occupation for ordinary purposes, that is to say, he can sue for trespass to his house and so on. He has the exclusive possession of those premises. No part of each of those houses is used in any ordinary sense for school purposes; each house is in the sole and beneficial occupation of the master. But though the master in each hereditament is for many purposes described as the occupier of the hereditament, it does not necessarily follow that for the purposes of rating he is properly entered as the occupier in the Rating Book. It is quite clear that as the result of judge-made authority the occupier of the premises may not be the occupier for the purposes of rating, taxation or voting. This has recently been discussed in your Lordships' House in the case of Glasgow Corporation v. Johnstone and Others [1965] A.C. 609, a case dealing with the Statutes applicable to the Scottish Rating legislation but which may, in my opinion, be safely applied to the relevant issue in this case. The earlier history was examined by Lord Reid in his speech and I do not propose to repeat it. It seems to me that the law upon this matter really stems from the Greenwich case 5 Man. & G. 112 where Tindal C.J. laid down the basic principle at page 120 in these terms:—
"In delivering our opinion upon a former case, … we laid down at some length the principle upon which we thought the class of cases to which the present appeal belongs, ought to be decided; and we drew the distinction between those cases where officers or servants in the employment of government are permitted to occupy a house belonging to the government as part remuneration for the services to be performed, and those in which the places of residence are selected by the government, and the officers or servants are required to occupy them, with a view to the more efficient performance of the duties or services imposed upon them. Upon that occasion, we declared our opinion to be that those officers or servants who fell within the first description might properly be considered to occupy as tenants, although the residence was allotted to them as such officers and servants, and although they might, if such residence had not been allowed to them, have had an additional allowance for lodging-money; whilst at the same time, we stated that the relation of landlord and tenant could not be created by the appropriation of a particular house to an officer or servant as his residence, where such appropriation was made—with a view, not to the remuneration of the occupier, but to the interest of the employer, and to the more effectual performance of the service required from such officer or servant."
So the occupier being required to reside there did not have a vote. In the Glasgow Corporation case it was argued in reliance on some observations in the judgment of Mellor J. in Smith v. Seghill Overseers L.R. 10 Q.B. 422, another rating case, that the mere requirement (presumably contractual) to reside is insufficient to make the occupation that of the master (the employer), but it must in addition be shown that residence was necessary for the purposes of employment in order to find that the occupancy should be that of the master. This was dealt with and disposed of in the speech of Lord Hodson in the Glasgow Corporation case at pages 626 and 627. The result of the authorities upon this question of occupation seems to me quite clearly to be as follows. First, if it is essential to the performance of the duties of the occupying servant that he should occupy the particular house or it may be a house within a closely defined perimeter, then, it being established that this is the mutual understanding of the master and the servant, the occupation for rating and other ancillary purposes is that of the master and not of the servant. In truth and in fact, in such a case, if the necessity for occupation is not expressed in the contract between master and servant it must, of course, be an implied term thereof in order to give efficacy to the contract between the master and the servant. This is obvious, although it seems never to have been pointed out before, perhaps because it is so obvious. Secondly, there is the case where it is not essential for the servant to occupy a particular house or to live within a particular perimeter, but by doing so he can better perform his duties as servant to a material degree; then, in such case, if there is an express term in the contract between master and servant that he shall so reside, the occupation for rating and ancillary purposes is treated as the occupation of the master and not of the servant. All this seems to me clearly to flow from the speech of Lord Hodson, though perhaps I have expressed it a little differently.
That, then, is the law which seems to me to be applicable to this case, but before turning to the facts as found by the Lands Tribunal I...
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