5.1 Riding establishments, trekking centres, or livery stables offering horses for hire must be licensed to operate under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. Where the operation is restricted to livery only, no license is required.
5.2 Common issues encountered with this class maybe:
- identifying the correct unit of assessment:
- the domestic/ nondomestic borderline
- agricultural exemption
- disabled persons exemption
Taking each one in turn:
5.2 Identification of the Unit of Assessment
Increasingly many equestrian establishments and leisure venues are diversifying into a multitude of other uses, often incorporating farm shops, cafes and the like.
Care should be taken in identifying the correct rateable occupier, particularly where facilities are shared between different ventures. For further information on the identification of unit of assessment please refer to Rating Manual section 2, part 2.
5.3 Domestic/ Non-Domestic borderline
Riding schools and/or livery stables occupied together with living accommodation should not be regarded as appurtenances belonging to, or enjoyed with, the living accommodation. They are not domestic premises and should be treated as composite non-domestic hereditaments in the same way that a shop and flat would be. For further information on the domestic/non domestic borderline please refer to Rating Manual section 2, part 5.
5.4 Agricultural Exemption
Buildings
It was confirmed in the appeals ofHemens (VO) v Whitsbury Farm and Stud Ltd (1988 RA277HL)that horses and ponies, other than those used for farming the land or reared for food, are not livestock within the definition in Section 1(3) Rating Act 1971, now paragraph 8(5) of Schedule 5 to the Local Government Finance Act 1988 (LGFA 88).
This means that loose boxes stabling horses used for riding and ancillary buildings, such as tack rooms, feed storesand suchare not agricultural buildings and are therefore rateable.
However, there may be parts of the property which are used for an exempt purpose. An example being a hay barn used either to store a hay crop taken from the land occupied by the riding school proprietor, or to store hay solely for livestock which are also kept by the proprietor of the riding school enterprise. Exemption considerations should not be limited to a whole building but also to a separate part of a building that is solely used for an exempt purpose.
If there is property which is used wholly for exempt agricultural purposes at certain times of the year and wholly for non-exempt purposes at other times, provided all the parties are agreeable, there is no objection to valuers agreeing a level of assessment which reflects the proportion of time used for exempt purposes to non-exempt purposes throughout the year, although the technically correct approach must be to alter the list each time the circumstances change.
Land
Agricultural land is defined in paragraph 2 of Schedule 5 to LGFA 88. This definition includes:
Land used as arable, meadow or pasture ground only.
However, paragraph 2(2)(d) of Schedule 5 goes on to state that agricultural land does not include:
Land used mainly or exclusively for purposes of sport or recreation.
In short, land used only for the grazing of horses should be treated as agricultural land within the meaning of paragraph 2(1)(a) of Schedule 5.
There may be varying degrees of use, in addition to grazing, that will not always lead to rateability. Where grazing land is used for the temporary erection of jumps for occasional casual recreational
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