Sheffield Corporation v Tranter (Valuation Officer)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS,LORD JUSTICE MORRIS,LORD JUSTICE PEARCE |
| Judgment Date | 06 June 1957 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1957] EWCA Civ J0606-1 |
| Date | 06 June 1957 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
[1957] EWCA Civ J0606-1
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
The Master of the Rolls (Lord Evershed)
Lord Justice Morris And
Lord Justice Pearce
In the Matter of the Local Government Act, 1948
In the Matter of an Appeal to the Lands Tribunal against a Decision of the West Riding of Yorkshire (South) Local Valuation Court and
In the Matter of the Lands Tribunal Act, 1949, Section 3 (4)
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir Harry Hylbon-Foster, Q.C.) and Mr PATRICK BRONNE (instructed by the Solicitor of Inland Revenue) appeared on behalf of the Appellant (Respondent).
Mr DAVID WIDDICOMBE (instructed by Mr John Heys, Town Clerk of Sheffield) appeared on behalf of the Respondents (Appellants).
: This is an appeal by way of Case Stated from a conclusion of the Lands Tribunal to the effect that a certain piece of land, in the actual occupation of a Mr George Dale but being within the confines of the High Hazels Park, Sheffield, is not liable to rating assessment. The High Hazels Park, Sheffield, was acquired, according to the statement in the Case Stated, in the year 1894 under the provisions of the Public Health Act, 1875, by a Deed under the terms of which the Respondents, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of the City of Sheffield, were bound to permit the park to be used for ever after as public walks and pleasure grounds within the meaning of Section 164 of the Public Health Act, 1875. We do not know more about the terms of the Deed, but it must, I think, be taken — and it has not really been in dispute before us — that this park, in all relevant respects, should be treated as of a similar character to such a park, for example, as the Brockwell Park, the subject-matter of the well-known case of Lambeth Overseers v. London County Council, which came before the House of Lords in 1897 and to which I shall later return. But according to the Case Stated an agreement was made in April 1954 between the Corporation of Sheffield and this Mr Dale whereby a refreshment pavilion was let to Mr Dale, by profession or trade an ice-cream merchant. I shall more particularly allude hereafter to the term of the agreement which provided that Mr Dale was to make available to users of the park certain.light refreshments, ice-creams and so forth, together with cigarettes and tobacco.
The parties before us have been, as Appellant, the Valuation Officer and, as Respondents, the Corporation of Sheffield. In order to dispose of the matter, it appeared at first a point of some materiality that Mr Dale was not himself before the Court. But Mr Patrick Browne has drawn our attention to the relevant provisions of the Acts of Parliament, and it is sufficient for me to say that, in accordance with those provisions, a notice was served by the rating authority upon Mr Dale and he had, if he had chosen to take it, an opportunity of contesting the claim to rate this refreshment pavilion. Under the same statutory provisions it was no less competent for the owner of the pavilicn, the Sheffield Corporation, also to contest the claim to rateability. In the event, only the Corporation have challenged the Valuation Officer, and so it is that the parties before us are those which I have named. But it is to be borne in aiind that this is a case in one respect unlike others which have been before the Court and particularly the Brockwell Park case. In this case the claim to put a hereditament on the valuation list is limited to the particular pavilion occupied by Mr Dale. It is not a claim to rate at large the park or parts of the park in the actual occupation of the local authority.
The case for the Crown has, if I may say so, the attractions both of simplicity and of common sense; for here the situation is, if you go and look at this refreshment pavilion, that you will find it in the exclusive occupation of the ice-cream merchant Mr Dale, who is carrying on there in an ordinary sense the business of a proprietor of a refreshment house. The confines of the pavilion and the surrounding area are defined, and the business is his business, out of which no doubt he is making his living. Not only so, but if you take the requisite ingredients for rateable occupation as they were formulated in 1949 by Mr Rowe in the course of his argument before this Court in the case of John Laing & Son Ltd. v. Assessment Committee for Kingswood Assessment Area, 1949 I King's Bench at page 550, you find, as the learned Solicitor-General observed, that all the four ingredients submitted to, and accepted by, Lord Justice Tucker are, on the face of them, satisfied in this case.
I refer to the passage at page 350 of the report: First, there must he actual occupation; second, it must be exclusive for the particular purposes of the possessor; third, the possession must he of some value or benefit to the possessor; and, fourth, the possession must not be for too transient a period. Anticipating the effect of the 1954 Agreement it may be said that all four of those conditions are in this case satisfied. If the matter, then, stood alone thus; that the sole question for the Court was to answer the question: Are those ingredients satisfied?, the conclusion would, in my view, be for the Appellant. But in truth that is not in the present case an exhaustive statement of the matters which have to be determined. It is of the essence of this case that the refreshment pavilion is upon a part, and an essential part, of the High Hazels Park. Again anticipating the conclusion which I have reached it seems to me that in light of the guidance we have from decisions, particularly in the Brockwell Park case, and in light of the findings of fact in this case, we must conclude here that there has not been such a "carving out1', (to use the phrase of che Solicitor-General) of this pavilion from the park as a whole as to make it in relevant respects distinct from the park and so expose it to rating liability.
I think it will be convenient to go at once to the Brockwell Park case. The facts in the case are set out most fully in the report before the Divisional Court in 1895 2 Queen's Bench at page 511. It there appears that this park had been acquired by the London County Council under certain Acts empowering the County Council to that effect in the year 1891- I need not read all the facts. The park itself, in area, was not very different from the area of the High Hazels Park. It had upon it certain particular features, including the former mansion house, and in paragraph 11 of the Case Stated (as reported at page 513 in the 1895 Queen's Bench report) I find: "The part" — that is the part of the former mansion house — "which is entered by the original back door, consisting of eight living rooms and a small office, is occupied by the resident superintendent of the park and his family". The Case went on to say that such a resident superintendent was reasonably necessary for the protection and proper management of the park for the purposes of the Act. The Case further states thai; certain other premises hdd been converted into use as a gymnasium and other like conveniences, and of the mansion house, of the part which was entered by the original front door, the ground floor and basement were occupied under a certain licence while the ether floors were unused. The occupation of the ground floor and basement was for the purposes of providing refreshment. We were provided by the Solicitor-General with a copy of the Licence Agreement fron which it appears that its terms were such thac the occupier, a MisHart, was not treated as having exclusive rights of occupation; but beyond a doubt that part of the former mansion house was used in the same way and for exactly the sac:e purpose as the refreshment pavilion in the present case; namely, for providing for users of the park refreshments in the ordinary course.
Now, I have already said that in the Brockwell Park case the claim was not made to rate as a separate rateable hereditament this mansion house or any part of the mansion house; it was a general claim for rating the park as a whole, Indeed, the opinion of the Divisional Court was that the claim was well founded. In the Court of Appeal, however, where the case is reported in 1896 2 Queen's Bench at page 25, a different view was taken. The basis of the decision in the Court of Appeal was I think alternatively put on the two grounds, first, that the occupation by the London County Council was really and in truth occupation by the public and, second, on the ground, which finds a place in the headnote, that the occupation could not be treated in the circumstances as having any net annual value at all and, therefore, on one or both grounds, the claim to rate could not; be supported.
In the course of the argument, however, a subsidiary point was taken. I think I can best state it by reading from the paragraph on page 40 of the report of the leading Judgment of Lord Justice A.L. Smith: "A subsidiary point was taken by the respondents that certain parts of the park – for instanee, that part of the old mansion house which is now used for refreshments frr the public, and the other part of the old ransion which was not occupied at all, and also the lodge and cottage – were subject-matters for separate assessments distinct from the park itself, and had a rateable value of their own. The Divisional Court held that this was not so, and I agree with them. The obligation imposed upon the London County Council by the Act of 1890 was to lay cut, maintain and preserve Brockwell park, and every part of it, as a park for the perpetual use thereof by the public for exercise and recreation. As before stated, the London County Council could let off no part of it. The...
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