The enquiry which set the value of land for rating was economic not legal in nature. The passing rent, if determined by the operation of the market, would carry significant weight in that process.
Scott LJ said: Where the particular hereditament is let at what is plainly a rack rent or where similar hereditaments in similar economic sites are so let, so that they are truly comparable, that evidence is the best evidence, and for that reason is alone admissible; indirect evidence is excluded not because it is not logically relevant to the economic inquiry, but because it is not the best evidence. (3.) Where such direct evidence is not available, for example, if the rents of other premises are shown to be not truly comparable, resort must necessarily be had to indirect evidence from which it is possible to estimate the probable rent which the hypothetical tenant would pay. (4.) This kind of estimating is a skilled business, and it is here especially that the role of the skilled valuer comes in. His employment is plainly contemplated by all the rating statutes of the last hundred years and has always been the practice in all disputes upon quantum of assessment, but, above all, wherever resort to indirect sources for assessing value is necessary. (5.) In weighing up the evidence bearing upon value, it is the duty of the valuer to take into consideration every intrinsic quality and every intrinsic circumstance which tends to push the rental value either up or down, just because it is relevant to the valuation and ought therefore to be cast into the scales of the balance before he looks to see the resultant figure on the dial at which the pointer finally rests . . (8.) The rent to be ascertained is the figure at which the hypothetical landlord and tenant would, in the opinion of the valuer or the tribunal, come to terms as a result of bargaining for that hereditament, in the light of competition or its absence in both demand and supply, as a result of ‘the higgling of the market’. I call this the true rent because it corresponds to real value.
Scott LJ
[1937] 2 KB 445, [1938] AC 321
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Orange PCS v Alan Roy Bradford (Valuation Officer) CA 17-Feb-2004
The claimant challenged the rating of the land it had used for the erection of a mobile ohone mast.
Held: Even though the company had the statutory right to place a mast in this location and without payment, for rating purposes the officer . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Rating
Leading Case
Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.193772