Prior v Sovereign Chicken Ltd

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeLORD JUSTICE LAWTON,LORD JUSTICE DILLON,LORD JUSTICE OLIVER
Judgment Date13 February 1984
Judgment citation (vLex)[1984] EWCA Civ J0213-2
CourtCourt of Appeal (Civil Division)
Docket Number84/0054
Date13 February 1984

[1984] EWCA Civ J0213-2

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE

COURT OF APPEAL

ON APPEAL FROM THE LANDS TRIBUNAL

Royal Courts of Justice

Before:

Lord Justice Lawton

Lord Justice Oliver

and

Lord Justice Dillon

84/0054

Between:
Anthony Basil Prior (Valuation Officer)
Appellant (Appellant)
and
Sovereign Chicken Limited
Respondents (Respondents)

MR. ALAN P. FLETCHER (instructed by a Solicitor of Inland Revenue) appeared on behalf of the Appellant/Appellant.

MR. DAVID G. WIDDICOMBE, QC. and MR. GUY R.G. ROOTS (instructed by Messrs Lovell, White and King) appeared on behalf of the Respondents/Respondents.

LORD JUSTICE LAWTON
1

I have asked Lord Justice Dillon to deliver the first judgment.

LORD JUSTICE DILLON
2

This is an appeal from a decision of the Lands Tribunal given on 16th September 1982 which is concerned with the exemption from rating of agricultural buildings.

3

The question formulated by the Lands Tribunal in the case stated, upon which the decision of this court is desired, is put thus: whether on a true construction of Section 26 of the General Rate Act 1967 and Sections 1, 2 and 4 of the Rating Act 1971 the word "persons" in Section 4(2)(b)(ii) of the Act of 1971 includes the singular "person". A similar question arises on the word "occupiers" in Section 26(4)(B)(i) and (ii) of the 1967 Act. In each case the question turns on whether or not Section 6 of the Interpretation Act 1978 applies. That section states that "In any Act unless the contrary intention appears, words in the singular include the plural and words in the plural include the singular".

4

The appellant in this court is the Valuation Officer; the respondent is the occupier of the building in question. The respondent is a company which, at the time of the hearing in the Lands Tribunal, was called Golden Produce Limited but is now called Sovereign Chicken Limited. Its business is the production of chickens for consumption as food. It is the occupier for rating purposes of a number of broiler farms (I think 17) to which batches of day old chicks are transferred from hatcheries belonging to the respondent. In the broiler farms the chicks are kept for their period of growth and fattening until they are ready for killing. They are then transferred to a processing factory for killing, plucking, eviscerating, dressing, packing and blast freezing ready for despatch to retail outlets. The particular processing factory with which this appeal is concerned is at Lymington in Hampshire and is not in a wholly agricultural area. (The relevance of that will become apparent when I come to the wording of the 1971 Act). It appears that the respondents have two other processing factories for other broiler farms. These other processing factories are in appropriately rural situations and, therefore, qualify for rating relief.

5

The current statutory provision for relief from rating of agricultural land and agricultural buildings is to be found first in Section 26 of the 1967 Act, subsection (1) of which provides:

"26-(1) No agricultural land or agricultural buildings shall be liable to be rated or be included in any valuation list or in any rate."

6

Subsection (2) is irrelevant for the purposes of this appeal. Subsection (3) contains a definition of the expression "agricultural land". This is primarily defined to mean any land used as arable, meadow, or pasture ground only, land used for a plantation, or a wood or for the growth of saleable underwood, land exceeding one quarter of an acre used for the purposes of poultry farming and various cottage gardens, market gardens, nursery grounds, orchards, and so forth. I would observe in passing that land used for the purposes of poultry farming does not include the site of a broiler house.

7

Subsection (4) of section 26 contains the definition of "agricultural buildings". In this section the expression "agricultural buildings"—

(a) means buildings (other than dwellings) occupied together with agricultural land or being or forming part of a market garden, and in either case used solely in connection with agricultural operations thereon; and

(b) includes a building which is used solely in connection with agricultural operations carried on on agricultural land and which is occupied either—

(i) by the occupiers of all that land; or

(ii) by individuals who are appointed by the said occupiers for the time being to manage the use of the building and of whom each is an occupier of some of the land or a member of the board of directors or other governing body of such an occupier who is a body corporate

where the number of occupiers of all the said land does not exceed twenty-four (two or more persons occupying jointly being counted as one, but as a separate person from any of them who are occupying any of the land severally)".

8

It is plain on the legislative history that whatever else it may cover Section 26(4) (b), which was originally included in the Rating and Valuation Act 1961, was introduced to cover certain varieties of agricultural co-operative as a result of the decision of this court in the Farmers' Machinery Syndicate v. Shaw [1961] AER, 285. Several points had become clear from that case in relation to the law as it previously stood. One was that where several individual farmers occupied their own several farms and they combined together to acquire machinery for the use of all of them—in that particular case a grain-drier—it could not be said that the grain-drier was occupied together with the individual farms, nor used solely in connection with the agricultural operations thereon. It also appeared from that case that there were cases where the rateable occupation of a co-operative venture was in some form of committee selected by the co-operators whose individual farms were serviced by it and that there were possibilities of difficulty where a member of the committee was a director of a company which owned one of the farms and not himself actually the owner of the farm. That, therefore, was the reason for the introduction of what became sub-paragraph (b) of Section 26(4).

9

The other thing that needs to be stated in relation to Section 26 was that it was held that it did not cover buildings used for factory farming, such as broiler houses and buildings for other forms of intensive production of meat and food; it was concerned with farming the land and with buildings which were used for farming the land.

10

It was in particular as a result of the decision that buildings used for factory farming were not covered that the Rating Act 1971 was enacted. Section 1 of that Act provides that in section 26 of the General Rate Act 1967 (which is referred to as the 'principal section')—

"(a) the expression 'agricultural buildings' shall include any building which is an agricultural building by virtue of section 2, 3 or 4 of the 1971 Act; and

(b) the expression 'agricultural land' shall include land occupied with and used solely in connection with the use of one or more such buildings."

11

There is then a provision in subsection (3) that "livestock" includes any mammal or bird kept for the production of food or wool or for the purpose of its use in the farming of land. Livestock would thus include chickens kept for the production of food.

12

Section 2 of the 1971 Act provides by subsection (1):

"2-(l) Subject to subsections (2) to (4) of this section, each of the following is an agricultural building by virtue of this section—

  • (a) any building used for the keeping or breeding of livestock;"

13

(I interject that that would clearly include a broiler house):

  • "(b) any building (other than a dwelling) which is occupied together with one or more buildings falling within paragraph (a) above and is used in connection with the operations carried on in that building or those buildings."

14

(Again, prima facie, that would include a processing plant for processing the chickens which have been bred in a broiler house). However, Section 2(4) of the 1971 Act provides:

  • "2-(4) A building is not an agricultural building by virtue of this section unless it is surrounded by or contiguous to an area of agricultural land (as defined in the principal section) which amounts to not less than five acres;"

15

There is then a proviso that—

"in determining for the purposes of this subsection—

  • (a) whether a building is contiguous to or surrounded by an area of agricultural land, or

  • (b) whether an area contiguous to or surrounding a building is an area of agricultural land and what is the size of such an area;

there shall be disregarded any road, railway or watercourse, any agricultural building (as defined in the principal section or [in the 1971 Act] and, if occupied together with the first mentioned building, also any other building and any land which is not agricultural land."

16

It is because of this five acre limitation that the respondents cannot claim rating relief in respect of their Lymington Processing Plant under section 2 of the 1971 Act, though they can in respect of their other processing plants. The limitation is strange in this respect, that it is not required that the area of not less than five acres should belong to, or be in the occupation of, the occupier of the building which is claimed as an agricultural building. It has to be agricultural land but it does not matter whose land it is.

17

Section 3 of the 1971 Act gives an exemption for buildings used in connection with the keeping of bees and is immaterial for present purposes. Section 4 then provides as follows:

"4-(1) Subject to subsection (3) of this section, a building other than a dwelling, is an agricultural building by virtue of this section if—

  • (a) it is used in connection with agricultural...

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