Decision Nº RA 29 2014. Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber), 28-07-2015 , [2015] UKUT 0301 (LC)
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Martin Rodger QC, Deputy President |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] UKUT 0301 (LC) |
| Date | 28 July 2015 |
| Court | Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) |
| Judgement Number | RA 29 2014 |
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UPPER TRIBUNAL (LANDS CHAMBER) |
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UT Neutral citation number: [2015] UKUT 0301 (LC)
UTLC Case Number: RA/29/2014 & RA/31/2014
TRIBUNALS, COURTS AND ENFORCEMENT ACT 2007
RATING – procedure – service of completion notice – whether completion notice addressed only to “the owner” valid – whether delivery of completion notice to premises followed by onward transmission of electronic copy by receptionist without authority to accept service was good service by the billing authority – s.42 and Sched. 4A, Local Government Finance Act 1988 – appeal allowed
IN THE MATTER OF AN APPEAL AGAINST AN APPEAL
OF THE VALUATION TRIBUNAL FOR ENGLAND
and
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UKI (KINGSWAY) LIMITED
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MR M DUNLEVEY (VO)
Respondents
Re: Floors 3-6,
1 Kingsway,
London WC2B 6AN
Before: Martin Rodger QC, Deputy President
Sitting at: Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London WC2A 2LL
on
9 March 2015
Sebastian Kokelaar, instructed by Head of Legal and Democratic Services, City of Westminster, for the appellant
Daniel Kolinsky QC, instructed by Jones Lang LaSalle for the respondents
© CROWN COPYRIGHT 2015
The following cases are referred to in this decision:English Cities Fund (General Partners) v Grace [2013] RA 215
Friends Life Co Ltd v Alexander (VO) [2012] RA 263
Galinski v McHugh [1989] 1 EGLR 109
Metis Apartments Ltd v Grace (2014) VTE Appeal No.442022493928/257N10
Tadema Holdings Ltd v Ferguson (2000) 32 HLR 866
Townsend Carriers v Pfizer (1977) 33 P. & C.R. 361
Introduction
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This appeal concerns the formal validity and service of a completion notice under Schedule 4A of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 delivered by the appellant on 5 March 2012 in respect of premises on the 3rd-6th floors of a building at 1 Kingsway, London WC2. The completion notice purported to bring the premises into the 2010 rating list with effect from 1 June 2012. By a decision of the Valuation Tribunal for England given by its President, Professor Graham Zellick QC on 15 April 2014, the completion notice was found both to have been defective and not to have been validly served. As a result the premises were removed from the 2010 rating list. The appellant, which is the billing authority for the premises now appeals against the decision.
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As the President observed generally in relation to completion notices in paragraph 2 of his decision:
“The notice thus has considerably importance for the building’s owner and significant sums of money may be involved once non-domestic rates are imposed. It is not therefore surprising that ratepayers raise challenges to the formalities as regards validity of the document and the effectiveness in law of its service.”
This appeal illustrates both types of challenge.
The Facts
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The relevant facts are not in dispute and I summarise them as follows.
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UKI (Kingsway) Limited, the first respondent, owns the freehold of the building standing at 1 Kingsway. In January 2009 it commenced a redevelopment of the building behind the original facade. On completion the redeveloped building included 130,000 sq ft of office space.
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In anticipation of the completion of the building discussion took place between Jones Lang Lasalle (“JLL”), the rating agents acting on behalf of the first respondent, and the appellant, acting in its capacity as the billing authority, concerning the service of a completion notice to fix the date on which the building, including the Premises, would be brought into the 2010 rating list. The parties did not agree on the appropriate date and on 23 February 2012 the appellant informed JLL that it intended to serve a completion notice in respect of the premises specifying a completion date of 1 June 2012. The appellant asked JLL to confirm the identity of the owner of the building but JLL declined to do so without first obtaining instructions from its client, which were not forthcoming.
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On 5 March 2012 a completion notice specifying 1 June 2012 as the completion date was delivered by hand to the building, where it was given to a receptionist employed by Eco FM, the facilities management company responsible for managing the building on behalf of the first respondent. The completion notice was addressed to the “Owner, 1 Kingsway, London WC2B 6AN”.
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Neither Eco FM nor its receptionist had any authority to accept the service of legal documents on behalf of the first respondent.
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The receptionist scanned the completion notice and transmitted it electronically to the first respondent. It is not known precisely when this occurred but there is no doubt that the completion notice had been received by the first respondent by this means not later than 12 March 2012, a week after it was delivered to the building.
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On 29 March 2012 JLL lodged an appeal against the completion notice contending, amongst other things, that it did not comply with the statutory requirements for such a notice and that it had not been validly served. When, on 7 May 2013, the Premises were brought into the list with a rateable value of £2,750,000 with effect from 5 March 2012 (subsequently corrected to 1 June 2012) JLL submitted a proposal on behalf of the first respondent that the entry be deleted on the grounds, amongst others, that the completion notice had been invalid. The proposal was not accepted and was transmitted by the second respondent to the Valuation Tribunal for determination on appeal. The appeals against the completion notice and against the inclusion of the premises in the list were subsequently consolidated and heard by the President of the Valuation Tribunal on 10 March 2014.
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As the President subsequently pointed out in his decision, the appellant could at that stage have mitigated any further risk by accepting that the completion notice was or might be invalid and by issuing a new one. In what might be seen as a high risk strategy the appellant chose instead to rely only on the original completion notice served in the manner I have described. I was told at the hearing of the appeal before me that even then, three years after the sufficiency of the completion notice had first been challenged, and almost a year after the President’s decision, no further completion notice had yet been served. It seems quite likely that the whole of this interesting but arcane dispute would have been avoided if the appellant had taken that elementary step in March 2012.
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Only two issues were raised by the first respondent at the hearing of the appeals by the Valuation Tribunal: first, it alleged that the completion notice was invalid because it was not addressed to the first respondent by name, and secondly, it said that the completion notice had not been validly served.
The relevant statutory provisions
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By section 42 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 (“the 1988 Act”) each non-domestic hereditament must be shown on the local non-domestic rating list maintained by the valuation officer for each billing authority. The expression “hereditament” is defined by section 64(1) of the 1988 Act by reference to its meaning under section 115(1) of the General Rate Act 1967, namely:
“Hereditament means property which is or may be liable to a rate, being a unit of property which is, or would fall to be, shown as a separate item in the valuation list.”
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The question whether a unit of property falls to be shown as a separate item in the valuation list is answered in the case of a newly-constructed building which has not yet been occupied by section 46A and Schedule 4A of the 1988 Act. When it comes to the notice of a billing authority that the work remaining to be done on a new building in its area is such that the building can reasonably be expected to be completed within 3 months, the authority is required by paragraph 1(1) of Schedule 4A to serve a notice on the owner of the building, referred to as a completion notice, as soon as is...
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