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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  















Rating - From: 1960 To: 1969

This page lists 13 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Arbuckle Smith and Co Limited v Greenock Corporation [1960] AC 813
1960
HL

Rating
The appellants had purchased a building which they wished to use as a bonded warehouse. In order to obtain the necessary licence they were required to carry out works of upgrading and repair. The rating authority made a demand for "occupied" rates for a period during which the works were being carried out but the building was not yet being used for its intended purpose. Held: Entry by the appellants for the purpose of maintenance, repair or conversion did not constitute occupation.
1 Citers


 
Society of Medical Officers of Health v Hope [1960] AC 553
1960
HL
Radcliffe, Cohen, Jenkins LL, Viscount Simons, Keith L
Rating, Taxes Management, Estoppel
A local valuation court had decided in 1951 that the Society's land was exempt from rates under section 1 of the 1843 Act. The exemption was conditional on certain facts relating to the Society and its purpose in occupying the building. In 1956 the land was shown as a rateable in the new valuation list. The Lands Tribunal rejected a submission that a res judicata estoppel arose from the 1951 decision even though it was admitted that there had been no change of circumstances. Held: The limited jurisdiction of the local valuation court, which might have to form opinions on questions of general law, but only incidentally to its direct function of fixing the assessment and the special position of the valuation officer or equivalent official did not create an assessment binding for future years.
Lord Radcliffe said there was: "high and frequent authority for the proposition that it is not in the nature of a decision on one rate or tax that it should settle anything more than the bare issue of that one liability, and that, consequently, it cannot constitute an estoppel when a new issue of liability to a succeeding year' s rate or tax comes up for adjudication. The question of this liability is a "new question."
Lord Keith said: "The valuation officer has a public duty to perform by making periodically every five years a valuation list of all hereditaments, with certain exceptions, in his rating area. He must necessarily reconsider and revise the previous valuation list. He has no personal interest in any appeals taken against his valuations, and has a duty to hold the scales as fairly as he can among the ratepayers affected, the occupiers of the various hereditaments. The general body of ratepayers is constantly changing. With each quinquennium the revaluation will affect a new body of ratepayers. I doubt if the valuation officer owing such a duty to an ever-changing body of ratepayers can be regarded as always the same party in the sense in which that expression is used for the application of the rule of res judicata. What if the appellant society changes its habitat, and moves into another rating area with a different valuation officer?
I emphasise these aspects of the functions of a valuation officer under the statute, for they lead to what I regard as the true answer to the submission for the appellants, which is that a public officer in the position of the respondent cannot be estopped from carrying out his duties under the statute."
Scientific Societies Act 1843 1
1 Citers



 
 Caffoor v Columbo Income Tax Commissioner; PC 1961 - [1961] AC 584
 
Midlothian Assessor v Buccleuch Estates Ltd [1962] RA 257
1962

Lord Kilbrandon
Rating
(Lands Valuation Appeal Court) The landowner had several parcels of woodland and sawmills. They were on different sites, but worked together as a single business.
Lord Kilbrandon observed: "It has never yet been admitted that you can have a unit of valuation consisting of widely scattered heritable subjects connected only by some functional or commercial nexus, and I do not see why it should be. I do not think one is being merely old fashioned or obscurantist in insisting, in the conception of unum quid, on a fairly close physical relationship between what might be considered as parts of a commercial unit; one is, after all, attempting to value not a business but heritable subjects, and it may be that the precedents, which all insist on such a physical relationship, indicate a determination to preserve that essential distinction. . . Not only do I know of no precedent in valuation practice which could justify a functional approach to the problem such as is here sought to be made, but I am still of opinion that no such approach can in this case give a proper content to the whole words of the statute."
1 Cites

1 Citers


 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v Henning (Valuation Officer) [1962] 1 WLR 1091
1962
CA
Lord Denning MR, Donovan and Pearson LJJ
Rating, Ecclesiastical
The court was asked whether a Mormon Temple was a public place of worship. Lord Denning MR rejected an argument that the Temple was merely a church hall: "The short answer is that this temple is not a church hall, chapel hall nor a similar building. It is not in the least on the same footing as a church hall or chapel hall. It is a very sacred sanctuary, quite different from a building of that category." Donovan LJ said that the Temple was: "far too important in the life of the Mormon Church" to be described as a building similar to a church hall or chapel hall.
1 Citers


 
Anderson Grice and Co Ltd v Assessor for Angus [1962] RA 90
1962


Rating
If a thing is by its nature movable, the mere passage of time will not make it heritable even though it is never in fact moved.
1 Citers


 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v Henning (Valuation Officer) [1964] AC 420
1964
HL
Lord Pearce
Rating, Ecclesiastical
The House was asked whether the Mormon Temple at Godstone was exempt from rates as a "place of public religious worship". Held: The words could not apply to places used for religious worship from which the public was excluded.
Lord Pearce said that Parliament was entitled to take the view that religious services which were open to the public provided a public benefit which justified the exemption. He explained that from 1601 churches of the Church of England were not subject to rates and that this exemption was extended by the Poor Rate Exemption Act 1833 to "any churches . . meetinghouses, or premises, or any part thereof that shall be exclusively appropriated to public religious worship". He continued: "By the Act of 1833 the legislature was intending to extend the privileges of exemption enjoyed by the Anglican churches to similar places of worship belonging to other denominations. Since the Church of England worshipped with open doors and its worship was in that sense public, it is unlikely that the legislature intended by the word ‘public' some more subjective meaning which would embrace in the phrase ‘public religious worship' any congregational worship observed behind doors closed to the public.
I find it impossible, therefore, to hold that the words ‘places of public religious worship' includes places which, though from the worshippers' point of view they were public as opposed to domestic, yet in the more ordinary sense were not public since the public was excluded.
. . Furthermore, it is less likely on general grounds that Parliament intended to give exemption to religious services that exclude the public, since exemptions from rating, though not necessarily consistent, show a general pattern of intention to benefit those activities which are for the good of the general public. All religious services that open their doors to the public may, in an age of religious tolerance, claim to perform some spiritual service to the general public . . "
Rating and Valuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1955 7(2)(a)
1 Cites

1 Citers



 
 Glasgow Corporation v Johnstone and Others (orse Johnstons); HL 1965 - [1965] 2 WLR 657; [1965] AC 609

 
 Field Place Caravan Park Ltd v Harding; CA 1966 - [1966] 2 QB 484
 
Wynn v Skegness UDC [1967] 1 WLR 52
1967


Rating

1 Citers


 
Scottish Burial Reform and Cremation Society v Glasgow Corporation [1967] UKHL 3; [1968] AC 138; [1967] 3 All ER 215
26 Jul 1967
HL
Lord Reid, Lord Guest, Lord Upjohn, Lord Wilberforce, Lord Pearson
Charity, Rating
The appellants sought partial exemption from rates on its premises. The Corporation challenged their charitable status. The society's object was to encourage and provide facilities for cremation. Held: The object was charitable.
Lord Reid said that it was not now necessary to produce evidence so as to show that the object was for the public benefit, and also that, this being so, the public benefit was not subverted because there was or might also be a profit or benefit to individuals involved in the prosecution of the objects: "But the appellants must also show that the public benefit is of a kind within the spirit and intendment of the Statute of Elizabeth I. The preamble specifies a number of objects which were then recognised as charitable. But in more recent times a wide variety of other objects have come to be recognised as also being charitable. The courts appear to have proceeded first by seeking some analogy between an object mentioned in the preamble and the object with regard to which they had to reach a decision. And then they appear to have gone further and to have been satisfied if they could find an analogy between an object already held to be charitable and the new object claimed to be charitable. And this gradual extension has proceeded so far that there are few modern reported cases where a bequest or donation was made or an institution was being carried on for a clearly specified object which was for the benefit of the public at large and not of individuals, and yet the object was held not to be within the spirit and intendment of the Statute of Elizabeth I. Counsel in the present case were invited to search for any case having even the remotest resemblance to this case in which an object was held to be for the public benefit but yet not to be within that spirit and intendment. But no such case could be found."
Lord Upjohn said: "Upon the first point it must be remembered that Lord Macnaghten's classification was taken from Sir Samuel Romilly's argument in Morice v. Bishop of Durham 162 years ago when the great majority of the inhabitants of the country were living in conditions which to-day would be regarded as of the utmost squalor. The concept of purposes beneficial to the community might then appear to have the qualities of a class and so perhaps, to a lesser extent, in 1891. This so-called fourth class is incapable of further definition and can today hardly be regarded as more than a portmanteau to receive those objects which enlightened opinion would regard as qualifying for consideration under the second heading."
As to the preamble to the 1601 Act: "While it may seem almost incredible to anyone not familiar with this branch of the English law that this should still be taken as the test, it is undoubtedly the accepted test, though only in a very wide and broad sense, well illustrated by the observations of Lord Greene M.R. in In re Strakosch [1949] Ch 529 . ."
He concluded, with some skepticism: "My Lords, I conclude by saying that the authorities show that the "spirit and intendment" of the preamble to the Statute of Elizabeth have been stretched almost to breaking point. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this was often due to a desire on the part of the courts to save the intentions of the settlor or testator from failure from some technical rule of law. Now that it is used so frequently to avoid the common man's liability to rates or taxes, this generous trend of the law may one day require reconsideration."
Local Government (Financial Provisions etc.) (Scotland) Act 1962 - Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act 1888 13
1 Cites

1 Citers

[ Bailii ]

 
 Commissioner of Valuation for Northern Ireland v Lurgan Borough Council; CANI 1968 - [1968] NI 104

 
 Dawkins (Valuation Officer) v Ash Brothers and Heaton; HL 1969 - [1969] 2 AC 366
 
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