(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.’
Judges:
Lord Kilbrandon
Citations:
[1962] RA 257
Jurisdiction:
Scotland
Citing:
Cited – Bank of Scotland v Assessor for Edinburgh 1890
(Lands Valuation Appeal Court) The court considered the rating applicable where several banks retained nearby properties for the occupation of its staff. There were three categories of residential premises: (i) dwellings which were in buildings . .
Cited by:
Approved – Farmer and Another v Buxted Poultry Ltd HL 10-Mar-1993
Buildings which were in fact far apart, could not be treated as being ‘occupied together with’ as agricultural buildings for rating purposes. . .
Cited – Woolway v Mazars SC 29-Jul-2015
The Court was asked how different storeys under common occupation in the same block are to be entered in the rating list for the purpose of non-domestic rating. In this case the firm’s two offices were in the same building, but the connection . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Rating
Updated: 09 May 2022; Ref: scu.591253