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This instruction applies to all bus garages.
List description: bus garage and premises
Scat code: 406 Bus Garages (Contractors Valuation), 407 bus garages (Rental Valuation)
Suffix: S
The National Valuation Unit (NVU) are responsible for the valuation of this class.
Any queries of a complex nature arising from a particular case should be raised through the CCT to be referred to the NVU Civics Classes facilitator.
NVU Civics has overall responsibility for the co-ordination of this class. The team are responsible for the approach to and accuracy and consistency of valuations for bus garages. The team will deliver Practice Notes describing the valuation basis for revaluation and provide advice as necessary during the life of the rating list. Caseworkers have a responsibility to:?????
Two sets of agreed values had been placed before the Tribunal, one on the basis of alternative use for warehousing or industry or transport depot and the other for existing use only in which the assessments were derived from agreed values and values determined on appeal for other bus garages.
The Lands Tribunal in their decision were quite adamant that no use other than that of a public service bus garage could be considered in the rating hypothesis:- We are satisfied that the practice which has stood for many years, from time immemorial in rating experience, of regarding the existing use as the only use to be valued is the right one and that so long as the proprietor makes a beneficial use of his property, the assessor has nothing to do with whether it might have been turned to other and more lucrative purposes.
By the Tribunals own admission, this decision has only a limited value due to lack of counter arguments by the respondent.
The decision should not be regarded as preventing a bus garage being valued by reference to the evidence of rents passing on, or assessments determined for, other hereditaments which are occupied for uses different to the subject hereditament, provided it can be shown by evidence the bus operator would equal the rent being paid for those hereditaments falling within a different mode or category.
The Lands Tribunal Member held that although alternative uses could be taken into account in valuing bus garages structural alterations in excess of de minimis could not be assumed. The work necessary to adapt six bus garages in Sheffield for another possible user was in excess of de minimis, and, even taking a broad view, there was no evidence of demand for alternative uses or the possible effect of such alternative uses on value. The Lands Tribunal therefore accepted the ratepayers valuations based on the agreed assessments of other bus garages in the West Midlands, Merseyside and Yorkshire supported by reference to the assessment of a large warehouse in Sheffield.
The Phillips (VO) and Elliott (VO) cases above should now be considered in light of the Williams (VO) decision which supports Fir Mill Ltd v Royton UDC and Jones (VO) 1960
At para 52 page 58 of the decision (referring to para 152 page 173 of LT decision) - General conclusions
The rebus sic stantibus rule identifies for the purpose of valuation the hereditament, the physical changes which may be made of it, and the mode or category of occupation. The rule rests on the concept that what has to be determined in rating is the value to the occupier of his occupation of the hereditament, measured by the rent on an assumed yearly tenancy In carrying out a valuation under the rating hypothesis the following assumptions are to be made about the hereditament:
that the hereditament was in the same physical state as on the material day. Alterations which the hypothetical tenant might make to the hereditament may be taken into account if, taken overall, they are minor. All other prospective alterations are to be ignored:
that the hereditament could only be occupied for a purpose within the same mode or category of purpose as that for which it was being occupied on the material day. Any prospective change of use outside that mode or category is to be ignored. In determining to what mode or category a particular use belongs it is the physical characteristics of the use. Some uses may not fall within any such broad category, however, and are to be regarded as sui generis. Any evidence relating to the rents or assessments of other hereditaments may be taken into account provided it is relevant to the valuation. There is no rule that evidence relating to another hereditament is irrelevant if that other hereditament is in a different mode or category of occupation.
and at paragraph 164:
I would certainly not treat that [the formulation in Fir Mill] as a statutory text. But Parliaments adoption of the expression mode or category of occupation must be taken as recognising that the formulation in Fir Mill is on the right lines, even if its precise scope has to be worked out on a case-by-case basis - no strict rule
This case concerned the valuation of an abattoir (sui generis use) paragraph 44 of the decision
An abattoir as the parties agree,