6.1 Inspections should be carried out in accordance with the Valuation Office Agency Property Inspector Manual.
6.2 A winery should be measured in accordance with the predominant rateable premises they occupy. For example, industrial buildings will be measured to Gross Internal Area (GIA), whilst occupations of retail type space will be Net Internal Area (NIA). Whichever method is chosen, regard should be had to the definitions contained in the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) Code of Measuring Practice for Rating purposes.
6.3 When inspecting a vineyard/winery, property inspectors should record the location and description to include the following:
- location- site - size, shape and topography- buildings infrastructure - age, quality, construction,- services - heating energy source and water source- car parking- photographs of the main constituent parts of the site. Typically, this can include: - indoor sales areas - outdoor sales areas - ancillary storage/office/processing areas
6.4 An inspection checklist is appended to this section (Appendix 1) and should be completed for all new properties, updated for maintenance work and stored in the property folder of the Electronic Document Records Management (EDRM) system.
6.5 Rateability
6.6 When inspecting this classes, special care must be taken with the following:
- identifying the correct unit of assessment
- agricultural exemption
6.7 Identification of the Unit of Assessment
6.8Care should be taken in identifying the correct rateable occupier, particularly where facilities are shared between different ventures. It is not uncommon for larger establishments to provide a range of facilities such as gift shops and cafes. Other Non- Domestic uses may be present on site such as conference facilities or holiday homes. Details should be sought as to whether these constitute let outs and/ or are operated on a separate basis.
6.9 Agricultural exemption
6.10 Vineyards are exempt as agricultural land. Provided all the grapes processed come from the viticulturists own vineyards, the processing of the grapes (the winery) should be regarded as incidental to the agricultural operation of growing the grapes. Processing in this context is to be taken to include bottling and storage of wine awaiting sale and buildings used for this purpose are exempt under Sch 5 para (3)(a).
6.11 If the viticulturist processes other grapes which are produced by other vineyards, none of the buildings will be exempt and, if they engage in selling wine by retail or wholesale (as opposed to selling to a wholesaler), the buildings used in connection with such activities will be rateable. However, regard should be had to the de minimis principle, which can be found in Section
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