[2025] EWHC 2336 (Ch)

Section 41 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 requires the Valuation Officer (an HMRC official) to compile and maintain lists for billing authorities (to be called their ‘local non-domestic rating lists’).

Section 42 of the 1988 Act requires such lists to show each relevant non-domestic hereditament in the authority’s area, at least some of which is neither domestic property nor exempt from local non-domestic rating, and which is not required to be shown in a central non-domestic rating list.

Section 43 of the Act governs liability for NDR in respect of occupied hereditaments. It provides

“(1)

A person (the ratepayer) shall as regards a hereditament be subject to a non-domestic rate in respect of a chargeable financial year if the following conditions are fulfilled in respect of any day in the year—

(a)

on the day the ratepayer is in occupation of all or part of the hereditament, and

(b)

the hereditament is shown for the day in a local non-domestic rating list in force for the year.”

As to occupation, Section 65(2) of the 1988 Act provides that

“Whether a hereditament or land is occupied, and who is the occupier, shall be determined by reference to the rules which would have applied for the purposes of the 1967 Act [the General Rate Act 1967] had this Act not been passed (ignoring any express statutory rules such as those in sections 24 and 46A of that Act).”

The classic statement of the ingredients of rateable occupation under those rules is that of Tucker LJ in John Laing & Son Ltd v Assessment Committee for Kingswood Assessment Area [1949] 1 KB 344, at 350: