Union Cold Storage Company Ltd (Appellants-Applicants) v Phillips (Respondent-Respondent)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE BUCKLEY,LORD JUSTICE ORR,SIR GORDON WILLMER |
| Judgment Date | 17 July 1975 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1975] EWCA Civ J0717-2 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 17 July 1975 |
[1975] EWCA Civ J0717-2
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
(Appeal of Applicants from decision of lands Tribunal dated May 2, 1973)
Lord Justice Buckley
Lord Justice Orr and
Sir Gordon Willmer.
MR M. CHAVASSE, Q.C. and MR F.A. AMIES, (Instructed by Messrs. R.A. Roberts) appeared on behalf of the Appellants (Applicants).
MR ALAN FLETCHER, (instructed by the Solicitor to the Inland Revenue) appeared on behalf of the Respondents (Respondents).
This is an appeal from a decision of the Lands Tribunal of the 2nd May, 1973, which was itself a decision on an appeal from the South East Lancashire Local Valuation Court. The Lands Tribunal dismissed that appeal from the local valuation court, finding that the subject-matter of the dispute was rateable and did not fall within the class of non-rateable plant.
The subject-matter of the Case is a cold store at Salford. The character of the building and the method of construction Is described In some detail in the case, and Is also Illustrated In architectural drawings which are part of the Case. I do not propose to describe again in detail the character of the building and the method of construction, but in order to make this judgment intelligible it is necessary for me to say something about the nature of the building.
The hereditament Itself is a piece of land greater than the site of the building with which we are particularly concerned. It Includes some open land, and it includes some ancillary buildings with which we are not directly concerned. Those ancillary buildings have in them offices, mess rooms, operational rooms of one kind and another, an engine room, a workshop and so forth. There Is an open car park area and various other open land round the building.
The building with which we are concerned is shown on drawing No. 2, the external walls being coloured red and green. They are brick and concrete walls of, I think, a steel frame building, and the roof is a corrugated roof. Within those external walls there is erected insulation to keep the internal rooms inside the building insulated from the externaltemperature. The insulation is shown in yellow on the plan, and it consists of internal walls which follow the line of the external walls, and those internal Insulated walls are constructed of insulated panels which are fixed to the external walls by means of rails which are attached to the external walls at three levels running round the building, one rail near the ground level, one about half way up and one near the ceiling, and the Insulated panels are atoned to these rails by cleats which are screwed Into the panels. This method of construction results In there being an air space between the internal insulated wall and the external wall, a gap of a few Inches. The building has some doors leading to the open constructed of insulated panels. The ceiling of the building is also constructed of insulated panels which are suspended by a rather similar method of attachment to that employed for the uprigit walls which I have mentioned, but in this case the attachment is to steel joists suspended from the roof girders.
The Interior area of the building is divided into 16 chambers or rooms, and they are divided from one another and from a corridor which forms part of the area by walls also formed of insulated panels. These panels are slotted Into the ground and slotted into grooves in the ceiling of the insulation assembly. The insulated panels have a groove down each edge, and where one panel adjoins another panel a wooden tongue or batten is inserted along the length of that groove, which fits into the groove in one panel and into the groove in the adjoining panel, so connecting the two (It could be described as a tongue), and those tongues are fixed in position with mastic adhesive. The lower extremity of the walls where it touchesthe floor of the building is protected by a cement kerb of some, I think, nine inches to protect the foot of the panels from damage. Six of the chambers are capable of being entered directly from the open air through doors such as I have described; the other 10 are accessible by internal doors either between the different chambers or between some of those chambers and the corridor which I have mentioned. The internal walls, the perimeter walls, are formed of 268 such panels as I have referred to. There are over 400 such panels in the internal walls that are not perimeter walls, that Is to say, the walls dividing the rooms from one another, and there are 1,395 panels in the ceiling. So it will be appreciated that this is an assembly of considerable size and complexity, although its method of construction may be said to be a simple one. The internal walls that are slotted into the floor and the ceiling are again fixed In that position with mastic.
The tribunal in its decision states — and this, I think, amounts to a finding of fact — that, "The Internal arrangement of the …. rooms could in theory be varied and the partition walls moved in order to meet a variation in demand for different storage requirements …. Removal of the partitioning would involve breaking up the kerb and the joints formed by mastic adhesive In floor groove within the kerb and between the panels. The battens covering the panel joints" — I have not mentioned those, but wherever a panel adjoins another panel there is a timber batten to cover the joint, and I think there are also intervening timber battens on the walls — "would also need to be removed." In the removal of the partitions the first panel would need to be broken, but the remainder could be sprung outof position after sawing through the rebates going into the floor and the roof, and it is estimated that it would take about a month to dismantle the partition walls if the paneling was to be re-used. No change in the layout of this assembly has ever been made, and I do not Imagine that It Is contemplated that It ever will be made, but It could be made in the way which I have described. It Is common ground that If what I may call the assembly of the Insulation inside were entirely removed the outer walls, the brick and concrete walls, could be used as a warehouse, but the building constructed with the insulation equipment erected Inside is, of course, designed for the particular use of the building as a cold store. I think it may be convenient to refer to the whole complex, including the outer walls, as "the cold store", to refer to the insulation assembly within it as "the assembly", and to call the separate rooms "the rooms".
The question which we have to consider arises under Section SI of the General Rate Act 1967, and that section provides: "(l) For the purpose of the valuation of any hereditament under section 19 of this Act otherwise than on the profit basis — (a) subject to any order under subsection (5) of this section, all such plant or machinery In or on the hereditament as belongs to any of the classes set out In the statement for the time being having effect under subsection (4) of this section shall be deemed to be part of the hereditament; (b) except as provided in the foregoing paragraph,...
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