Verrall v Hackney London Borough Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS,LORD JUSTICE MAY |
| Judgment Date | 18 November 1982 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1982] EWCA Civ J1118-1 |
| Docket Number | 82/0446 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 18 November 1982 |
[1982] EWCA Civ J1118-1
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
DIVISIONAL COURT
(MR. JUSTICE WOOLF)
Royal Courts of Justice.
The Master of The Rolls
(Sir John Donaldson)
Lord Justice Watkins (Not Present)
and
Lord Justice May
82/0446
1982 H. No. C08582
MR. CLEVELAND BUTTERFIELD (instructed by Messrs. J.E. Baring & Co.) appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR. HARRY SALES (instructed by the Solicitors Department, London Borough of Hackney) appeared on behalf of the Respondents.
This is a judgment of the court which has been prepared by Lord Justice May, and counsel have it. The appeal is allowed and the summons will be returned to the magistrate with a direction to dismiss it.
The judgment I am about to hand down is the judgment of the court.
This is an appeal from a judgment of Mr. Justice Woolf of the 23rd June, 1982 dismissing an appeal by the present appellant by way of case stated from the decision of a stipendiary magistrate sitting at the Thames Magistrates' Court on the 23rd June, 1981.
The learned magistrate had before him a summons issued on a complaint by the present respondents, who are the rating authority for the Borough of Hackney, pursuant to section 97 of the General Rate Act 1967. This summons alleged that the appellant was a person duly rated and assessed to the general rate of the borough made respectively on the 22nd March, 1978, the 28th March, 1979 and the 26th March, 1980 in the total sum of £10,076.41, but which he had not paid. He was therefore summoned to appear at the Thames Magistrates' Court to show cause why he had not done so. The relevant premises were Excalibur House, 73 Great Eastern Street, London, E.C.2.
At the hearing before the magistrate, which in fact took place on three separate days in January, April and June, 1981 it immediately became apparent that the appellant's defence was that he had not been the occupier of the relevant premises and was thus not liable for the rates in respect of them on general principles.
The relevant statutory provisions are as follows.
Section 1(2) of the General Rate Act 1967 provides:
"Every rating authority shall have power in accordance with this Act to make and levy rates on the basis of an assessment in respect of the yearly value of property in their rating area for the purposes of applying the proceeds thereof to local purposes of a public nature".
By section 3(1) a rate made by a rating authority is deemed to be made on the date on which it is approved by the authority. In so far as is material, section 3(2) then provides that a resolution of an authority specifying the amount per pound of rateable value at which the rate is to be levied shall be taken to constitute approval of the rate.
Then it is section 16 of the Act which contains the fundamental provision that it is the occupier of property who is liable to be assessed to rates in respect of the hereditament which he occupies according to its rateable value determined in accordance with the other provisions of the Act.
Part V of the Act provides for the preparation of a valuation list of the hereditaments within the area of the rating authority by the relevant valuation officer. The contents of such list are laid down by the Valuation Lists Rules 1972. For present purposes it is sufficient to say that the list must contain a description of the material hereditament, its address, together with the name of the occupier if this is needed for the purposes of identification, and the rateable value of the premises. By virtue of section 108 of the Act, the valuation list is open to inspection by ratepayers.
Part V also contains provisions enabling persons aggrieved by the inclusion of any hereditament in the valuation list or by any value ascribed to it in that list, amongst other things, to make a proposal for an appropriate alteration to the list to the valuation officer. If such a proposal is agreed by the valuation officer, then he is required to alter the valuation list accordingly. If he does not agree the proposal, then the issue between the person aggrieved and the valuation officer is to be determined by a local valuation court constituted as set out in other provisions contained in Part V of the Act.
Section 18 contains the general provisions for calculating the amount of the rate for which an occupier may be assessed, having regard to the rate made by the rating authority as applied to the rateable value of the relevant hereditament in the valuation list, all in accordance with the other sections of the Act to which we have already referred. The sum so calculated is levied upon the person alleged to be liable to pay it by a demand note which has to contain information with respect to the matters set out in section 5(1) of the Act.
Section 7 provides for certain appeals in respect inter alia of the rate and the demand note. For the purposes of the present case only subsections (1) and (2) are material and these are in the following terms:
"(1) Subject to subsection (2) of this section, any person who—
(a) is aggrieved by any rate; or
(b) has any material objection to the inclusion or exclusion of any person in or from, or to the amount charged to any person in, any rate; or
(c) is aggrieved by any neglect, act, or thing done or omitted by the rating authority,
may appeal [to the Crown Court and such appeal shall be commenced by giving notice to the appropriate officer of the Crown Court within twenty-one days of—
(a) the date of publication of the rate under section 4 of this Act; or
(b) the act or thing done by the rating authority; or
(c) the giving of notice for the purposes of this section to the rating authority as to the neglect or omission concerned,
whichever is the latest]; (g) and notice of any such appeal shall be given to the rating authority and to any person other than the appellant with respect to whom the rate may be required to be altered in consequence of the appeal; and any such person shall, if he so desires, be heard on the appeal.
(2) No appeal shall lie under this section in respect of any matter in respect of which relief might have been obtained under Part V of this Act by means of—
(a) a proposal for the amendment of the current valuation list; or
(b) an objection to such a proposal; or
(c) an appeal against such an objection."
Thus any disputed question relating to the valuation or description of the hereditament sought to be rated is a matter for the local valuation court and cannot be appealed to the Crown Court under section 7. On the other hand, a person to whom a rate demand has been addressed and upon whom it has been served may appeal against it pursuant to the provisions of section 7 on the basis, for instance, that he was or is not the occupier of the relevant premises—at least where he has not been named as an occupier in the valuation list for identification purposes: whether or not in such a case an appeal would lie to the Crown Court on the ground of alleged non-occupation if the proposed appellant was so named in the valuation list is not a point which we need decide on this appeal. Our attention was drawn to the fact that similar appeal provisions to those in section 7, prior to 1972 to Courts of Quarter Sessions, have been contained in all earlier rating legislation. We were, for instance, shown the similar provisions in the earliest Act in this field, namely section VI of the Poor Relief Act 1601.
Reverting to the modern legislation, the 1967 Act then enacts that the payment of rates legally assessed on and duly demanded from a person may be enforced by distress and by the sale thereafter of that person's goods and chattels under Part VI of the Act. Ultimately, if there is insufficient distress and the non-payment of the rates is shown to have been due to the wilful refusal or culpable neglect of the person assessed, then he is liable to be committed to prison. The provisions of the Act relating to distress which are relevant to the present case are as follows:
" Section 96(1) Subject to section 62 of this Act and to subsection (2) of this section, if any person fails to pay any sum legally assessed on and due from him in respect of a rate for seven days after it has been legally demanded of him, the payment of that sum may, subject to and in accordance with the provisions of this Part of this Act, be enforced by distress and sale of his goods and chattels under warrant issued by a magistrates' court; and, if there is insufficient distress, he may be liable to imprisonment under the provisions of this Part of this Act in that behalf. Section 97(1) The proceedings for the issue of a warrant of distress under this Part of this Act may be instituted by making complaint before a justice of the peace and applying for a summons requiring the person named in the complaint to appear before a magistrates' court to show why he has not paid the rate specified in the complaint. Section 98 The justices may state a case under the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952 when called upon to issue a warrant of distress under this Part of this Act."
It was under these provisions that the appellant in the instant appeal was summoned before the Thames Magistrates' Court as we have already mentioned. As we have also said, he sought to show that he had not paid the rates assessed upon him because he contended that he was not the occupier of the material hereditament at the relevant time. That such a defence to an alleged...
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