England and Wales Lands Tribunal

[2004] EWLands RA_17_2003 (22 March 2004)

RA/17/2003

LANDS TRIBUNAL ACT 1949

RATING – hereditament - holiday chalet park – valuation – whether park to be assessed as single hereditament under Non-Domestic Rating (Caravan Sites) Regulations 1990 – whether chalets caravans within Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 s29 – held not caravans because not capable of being moved from one place to another – each to be entered as single hereditament – appeals dismissed

IN THE MATTER of an APPEAL from a DECISION

of the LINCOLNSHIRE VALUATION TRIBUNAL

BETWEEN

Mr & Mrs C OADES

Appellants

and

DENNIS EKE

Respondent

(Valuation Officer)

Re: New Trend Holiday Park, Ancaster Avenue, Chapel St Leonards,

Skegness, Lincs PE24 5SN

Before P R Francis FRICS

Sitting at Lincoln County Court, The Court House, 360 High Street,

Lincoln, LN5 7PS

on

6 February 2004

The following cases are referred to in this decision:

Atkinson (VO) v Foster and Others [1996] RA 246

Carter v Secretary of State for the Environment [1994] 2 EGLR 194

Simon Weightman BSc (Hons) MRICS IRRV of Clark Weightman, Chartered Surveyors, appeared for the appellants

Dennis Eke MRICS of the Specialist Rating Unit (East) of the Norwich Valuation Office appeared in person with permission of the Tribunal


 


DECISION

1. This is an appeal heard under the Simplified Procedure (rule 28, Lands Tribunal Rules 1996, as amended). It is consolidated from separate appeals relating respectively to the 1995 and 2000 non-domestic rating list entries for hereditaments described as "holiday chalets" and "store and premises" at New Trend Holiday Park, Ancaster Avenue, Chapel St Leonards, Skegness, Lincs ("the subject site"). The 1995 list showed those of the 123 chalets on the site that were used for holiday hire, and thus not in the Council Tax list, to have rateable values (RVs) between £325 and £475 with the store and premises at £1,150; the RVs in the 2000 list were between £385 and £520 for the chalets and £1,175 for the store and premises.
2. The Lincolnshire Valuation Tribunal, in its decision of 22 May 2003, determined that the individual assessments applicable to the accommodation units should remain in place rather than, as the appellants had sought in their proposals, to be merged into a single assessment along with the stores and site owner's accommodation. The appellant ratepayers seek to overturn that decision on the grounds that all the separately assessed hereditaments at New Trend Chalet Park should be treated as a single rateable hereditament (including all but one of the chalets in the Council Tax list) on the basis that the accommodation units are caravans within the terms of the relevant legislation.
3. The parties produced an agreed statement of facts from which, together with my inspection of the subject site on 5 February 2004 and the evidence, I find that New Trend Holiday Park comprises a level site of about 7 acres containing 123 holiday chalets, a site office, various stores (one with a flat over), a modern licensed club (The Ancaster Club) and a recently completed small block of flats. Stephensons of Huddersfield in accordance with a planning consent obtained for 122 units in 1959 originally developed the park, which is within walking distance of the village centre and the sea. One further unit was added in the 1970s and brick built stores with accommodation above, the club and the residential flats were added in the 1990s. This was believed to be Stephenson's first foray into chalet homes (hence the site name) but they subsequently developed similar parks in a number of locations.
4. Of the initial 122 chalets, 116 are all of one design and comprise factory made units 27 feet long, by 12 feet wide of a basic timber "box" construction having pitch-pine weatherboard cladding to 3 of the external walls and full height window and entrance door panels to the front end, under a projecting canopy. There are flat, single pitch roofs covered with mineral felt and the units rest upon single thickness dwarf brick walls incorporating a felt damp proof course. Main water, electricity and drainage are connected. Approximately 50% of the chalets have had their original softwood windows and front panels replaced with uPVC units and six have had the internal accommodation extended (on newly built sleeper walls) by moving the glazed front section forward by about 18 inches beneath the canopy. 6 chalets are larger, and are approximately 38' x 18'. The one additional chalet, a standard 27' x 12' unit, which had originally been Stephenson's show unit, was constructed on a concrete base, and the appellants agree it cannot be termed "mobile" in accordance with the relevant legislation. The original office/stores comprise two Stephenson units added in the 1970s; these having a metal framed base incorporating a steel sled to facilitate on-site movement.
5. The accommodation units had originally been sold as holiday homes on 42 year leases, those leases being for the units alone – all the grounds around them remaining in the ownership and control of the site operator. Planning permission was granted in 1976, restricting the occupation of the units to between 16 March and 31 October in any one year, but the current site rules indicate that the use has subsequently been extended to the period from 1 March to 5 January in the following year, thus facilitating occupation over the Christmas/New Year period. This time extension is in accordance with a further planning permission obtained in 1997. The appellants' predecessor site operator has renewed some of the leases with longer terms (in excess of 90 years) although the appellants are now systematically renewing the remaining original leases as they expire with similar 42 year terms, subject to the occupiers undertaking a refurbishment programme of their units, to include replacement of original windows and external doors.
6. At the relevant dates, accommodation units and other areas within the appellant's occupation were:

1 April 1995: Chalets B1, B14, C1, C6, C12, D10, F7, F17, G10, G16 (10)

The flat above the store, site office/stores/compound, roads, grassed areas and 51 Ancaster Avenue (the appellant's principal residence).

1 April 2000: Chalets B1, B13, D2, E1, F4, F11, F15, F21 (8)

The flat above the store, site office/stores/compound, roads, grassed areas and the Ancaster Club.

The remaining chalets were all subject to Council Tax.

7. The parties have agreed that, if this appeal succeeds, and I find for a merged assessment, the appropriate rateable values are: 1 April 1995 - £23,000, and 1 April 2000 - £30,600 on the basis of 122 accommodation units and all the other areas within the site operator's control.
8. Each of the 123 chalets is in the occupation of its respective tenant, but the majority are not the sole or main residence of an individual. However, at the relevant dates of 1 April 1995 and 1 April 2000 four and ten chalets respectively were the subject of claims for Housing Benefit, indicating that those may have been sole or main residences. Under section 66(3) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 as amended, a domestic caravan used as a sole or main residence cannot be valued as part of a caravan park and should be subject to Council Tax. The remainder are thus not domestic property under that section, and they fall to be included in the local non-domestic rating list. Section 64(3) of the 1988 Act gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations providing that in prescribed cases anything which would (apart from the regulations) be more than one hereditament shall be treated as one hereditament. The Non-Domestic Rating (Caravan Sites) Regulations 1990 have been made under this power. Regulation 3 provides:

"3 Treatment of pitches etc as one hereditament

(1) Where pitches for caravans on a relevant site constitute separate hereditaments by virtue of their being occupied by persons other than the site operator, those pitches shall…together with so much of the site as constitutes a hereditament in the occupation of that site operator, be treated as one hereditament and as occupied by that site operator…

(3) For the purposes of this regulation a caravan pitch, and any area comprising it, shall be taken as including the caravan for the time being on the pitch if apart from this regulation the caravan would be included as part of a rateable hereditament."

9. Regulation 2 provides that "caravan" has the same meaning as it has for the purposes of Part I of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, and section 29(1) of the that Act provides:

"'caravan' means any structure designed or adapted for human habitation which is capable of being moved from one place to another (whether by being towed, or by being transported on a motor vehicle or trailer) and any motor vehicle so designed or adapted…"

10. I should note that the Caravan Sites Act 1968 imposes size limitations on this definition, but it is agreed that all of the chalets fall within the prescribed limits. I should also note that the VO pointed out that under regulation 2 a relevant site is land in respect of which a caravan site licence is required under the 1960 Act and that no licence had been granted for New Trend Holiday Park. This point is not in my view persuasive. The only question is whether each of the chalets is a caravan within the definition; and in particular whether it is capable of being moved from one place to another.

Appellants' case

11. Mr Weightman is a partner in Clark Weightman, Chartered Surveyors of Hull, a practice he founded in 1999 following over 7 years with the Valuation Office. Since qualification 14 years ago, Mr Weightman has specialised in valuation for rating purposes, and has been involved with the appellants' site since 1997.
12. He said that the grounds for the properties to be merged into a single rating assessment are based upon the facts that (a) the units at New Trend Holiday Park are defined as caravans, according to the legislation and (b) under that legislation caravan pitches and the caravans that stand upon them, situated in leisure caravan parks, shall be treated as a single rateable assessment together with the parts of the site in the occupation of the site operator. Indeed, the VO had, in February 2001, merged the individual units under the 1990 rating list (following a proposal by Mr Oades), with the intention of merging the 1995 and 2000 lists also, but had a change of heart based upon advice received from his building surveyors relating to the construction of the units.
13. Mr Weightman said that section 3(1) of the Non-Domestic Rating (Caravan Sites) Regulations 1990 ("the 1990 regulations") showed that if the New Trend units can satisfy the criteria, they should be merged. The description of a caravan under the 1960 Act, as amended by the 1968 Act, had been adopted in section 66(1) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 ("the 1988 Finance Act") for rating purposes. It had been agreed with Mr Eke that the units fall within the size stipulations under section 13(2) of the 1968 Act. It was not, he said, the physical appearance of the structure that mattered, nor the description – caravan, chalet or any other name. It was also not necessary to have regard as to how the units came onto the site – whether as a single section, or two sections that were then bolted together. However, he said the advertising material produced by Stephensons in the 1960's provided good evidence that they were transported to the site in one piece. Those advertisements also described the units as portable.
14. The relevant criterion was whether the structures were capable of being moved from place to place; either by being towed, or transported on a motor vehicle at the relevant dates. In this respect, it was important to note that the chalets were not fixed to the brick sleeper walls upon which they were sited. They merely rest upon the damp proof course and, due to their 'box' construction, could at any time be lifted off their bases (once the services had been disconnected) onto a vehicle, and relocated to another part of the site or, indeed, elsewhere. The small extensions that had been added to 6 of the units made no difference, in his view, to this concept.
15. As he was not an expert in such matters, Mr Weightman said that he had obtained opinions from Mr David Cates, of D C Services (a general building contractor who had dealt with all aspects of maintenance on the site for some 22 years) and from Foremans Relocatable Building Systems. Mr Cates had confirmed that the units were free standing rather than anchored, and supported on their brick bases solely by their own weight. They could be lifted by first removing the weatherboard strip (a timber board at the base of the walls that would have been attached after the units were first located on their plinths), applying wedges to lift the structure, and then passing steel rods through – these being used to lift the whole structure off its base with a crane. Foremans carried out a site inspection in April 2003, and as specialists in the transportation of relocatable buildings, concluded that due to the relatively small size of the buildings, and good, unrestricted access being available, it would not be difficult to crane the units onto the back of flat bed lorries. Firstly, after the services had been disconnected, high-lift jacks would be used to raise the unit off its brick plinth to allow lifting ties to be slipped under the structure to provide a cradle, which would be raised by spreading bars on the crane. In their opinion, the internal wall within the chalet would provide the necessary rigidity to the unit as it was lifted.
16. Mr Weightman referred to Atkinson (VO) v Foster and Others [1996] RA 246 that Mr Eke was using in support of his case. He said that was a Lands Tribunal case in respect of timber second homes on an 18.5 acre site at Neuam Crag in the Lake District where the roles were reversed. There, the appellant valuation officer was seeking to merge the units into a single non-domestic assessment, whilst the individual freehold owners were seeking to remain separately assessed for council tax. The Tribunal, in dismissing the appeal, found for the residents and, in doing so, it had regard to the particular circumstances at that location. Having personal knowledge of Neuam Crag, Mr Weightman said that to move the units there would not have been feasible due to the undulating nature of the site, the close proximity of trees, the individual locations of the buildings and potential problems with trespass - the lodges there including the ground immediately around them, as well as the 'footprint' upon which the units stood. The circumstances of that case were, he said, so different as to make consideration of it inapplicable in this instance.
17. The case in the Court of Appeal of Carter v Secretary of State for the Environment [1994] 2 EGLR 194 had been mentioned in Atkinson. In that case, Mr Weightman said, it was held that because, in order for the unit to be moved, it had to be broken down into its four constituent sections (and those sections did not include the base), it did not satisfy the definition of a caravan. In this case, the units at New Trend could be lifted in one piece.
18. In Mr Weightman's opinion, the units satisfy the mobility test as required by the relevant legislation – the brick base does not form part of the structure, and the fact that there are no wheels, chassis or skids beneath the unit is not relevant in determining that they are mobile, and can be moved. The evidence and opinions he had obtained from Mr Cates and Foremans was sufficient to establish his case, and he asked the Tribunal to find in his clients' favour and determine that the units in both the non-domestic Rating List and those in the Council Tax list should be merged into a single non-domestic rating hereditament at 1 April 1995 and 1 April 2000. As to the units on the site upon which Housing Benefit was being claimed by the occupiers (and Mr Weightman said he did not know which specific units were involved – that information being confidential), he accepted that they would be assessed for Council tax, but nevertheless, this appeal was based upon the premise that all but one of the units should be merged.
19. In cross-examination, Mr Weightman said that it was not the public perception of a caravan – static or otherwise – with wheels and a towbar that mattered in this case – it was the definition according to section 29 of the 1960 act that had to be determined. However, he accepted that the units at New Trend, with no wheels, skids, chassis or towbar had been sitting on their brick bases for in excess of 40 years but insisted that they were still, by design, mobile in that they were not physically fixed to the bases. The fact that the site office units had skids and the chalets themselves did not, in his view, prove the immobility of the chalets as argued by Mr Eke.

Respondent's case

20. Mr Eke is a chartered surveyor who has been involved with the valuation of land and buildings for some 38 years, and has been employed by the Valuation Office Agency since 1989. He is authorised by the Valuation Officer for the East Lindsay Billing Authority pursuant to section 61(1) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 to act as Valuation Officer for the purposes of this appeal. He is currently a member of the Specialist Rating Unit (East), personally dealing with all caravan parks and sites in the East Midlands and East Anglia. He has inspected the subject site on a number of occasions between 1998 and the present day, and with the permission of the leasehold owner (Mr Ewen) of a number of the units, undertook an inspection of the sub-floor area of one of the standard units in February 2001 in the company of Mr Weightman.
21. The question to be addressed, Mr Eke said, was whether the chalet properties situated at the New Trend Holiday Park are properly described as caravans as provided for in the relevant statutory framework and he set out at length the relevant legislation under which this appeal is to be determined. Firstly, the term "Caravan" is defined in section 29(1) of the 1960 Act and the key words are "…which is capable of being moved from one place to another (whether by being towed, or being transported on a motor vehicle…" The 1968 Act provided amendments to cover the trend for larger caravans that were delivered to a site in two parts, and then bolted together in situ.
22. He said that his detailed inspection of the chalet at 3 Chatsworth Avenue (unit C3), and particularly the underfloor area, revealed them to be of flimsy construction and the risks of damage associated with any attempts to lift the units either onto a vehicle, or to crane them to another location on-site, were high. The appellants had acknowledged that none of the units had been moved in the forty years they had been there, and it was inconceivable that they could effectively be moved after all this time without causing considerable damage.
23. The later site office/reception/store buildings had metal frames and steel 'sled' to facilitate movement around the site. These were modified from the original, this being apparent from the undated Stephenson's advertisement for the units that said "We have now made it available as a ski mounted mobile chalet-caravan…..quickly and easily transported on a trailer or wheeled chassis". Mr Eke said that by no stretch of the imagination could the original units that did not incorporate the 'ski mounting' be considered portable. Furthermore, there was a question as to whether the 6 units that had been extended could, even if what Mr Cates and Foremans said, be moved in one piece.
24. To support his arguments, Mr Eke referred to Atkinson (VO). He said that case, although not factually identical, set out the thought process that is necessary in determining whether or not a structure is a caravan, and whilst each situation should be determined upon its own merits, it helped to establish the principle that the units have to be realistically capable of being moved as a whole, and as those at New Trend could not. For the reasons he had given therefore, he submitted that the appeal should be dismissed.

Conclusions

25. As I have said, the only question is whether each of the chalets is a caravan within the definition; and in particular whether it is capable of being moved from one place to another. My inspection of the underfloor of one of the units confirmed Mr Eke's statement that they were 'flimsy', and there was no sign, or any evidence produced, to indicate that there was any built-in provision to facilitate their being lifted, dragged or moved once installed. There was no steel frame, sled or skis (as there was on the site office/store units – those apparently being based upon the modified design referred to in the advertisement) and thus there was no gap beneath the chalet structure through which slings could be passed. It is therefore, in my view, safe to conclude that the chalets were not designed or intended to be moved once in situ.
26. As to whether they are capable of being moved, I am not persuaded by Mr Cates' suggestion that one simply installs wedges, and then passes through steel bars to facilitate lifting. Whilst wedges were presumably used when the chalets were originally lowered onto the sleeper walls to facilitate removal of lifting slings, and then knocked out, reversing the process would, I think be rather more difficult. Foremans suggestions seem to me to be more logical, but bearing in mind the construction, such jacking up could conceivably cause distortion and damage to the structural timbers. Even if the building was not damaged at that stage, the absence of any form of chassis or base-frame leads me to conclude that any attempt to lift it onto a trailer or flat-bed lorry, or, for that matter, to drag it on timber sleepers would probably cause severe damage. Furthermore, regarding Foremans methodology, the crane would have to be placed at one end of the unit to be moved, rather than beside it due to the close proximity of the other chalets. It is this latter point that persuades me beyond doubt that the chalets are not capable of being moved. They are located in long rows on the park, with little room between them, and access to the majority for cranage purposes is not, in my judgment practical. The fact that six of the units have been extended would, I think, affect the mobility of those chalets even further, despite Mr Weightman's opinions to the contrary.
27. In drawing the conclusion, in Atkinson (VO), that the structures at Neaum Crag were not caravans within the statutory definition, HH Judge Marder and A P Musto FRICS said (at 263):

"It may be necessary to take account (inter alia) of the degree of fixing of the structure on the ground, and to the degree to which any additions may have been made which may or may not have become part of the structure. We think too that in view of the sophistication of modern technology, which is capable of moving almost anything, it is not sufficient to show that a structure is theoretically capable of being moved from one place to another; it may be necessary to determine whether that particular structure in a particular location is in practice capable of being moved, having regard not only to possible damage to the structure itself, but also to the practical problems of access, trespass, possible damage to protected trees and so on."

The same questions have arisen in this appeal, and I have come to the same conclusions. In this case, I have seen or heard nothing that persuades me the VT was wrong and the appeal is therefore dismissed.

28. This appeal was heard under the Simplified Procedure, and there being, in my view, no exceptional circumstances to warrant me doing otherwise, I make no award as to costs.

DATED 22 March 2004

(Signed) P R Francis FRICS