[2025] UKUT 00343 (LC)

Mr Ormondroyd submitted that the hereditament in this case is a right, with an express statutory provision that it includes the right to use the actual sign in place. It had been argued for the ratepayer at the VTE that in some previous decisions the VTE had placed reliance on the Valuation for Rating (Plant and Machinery) (England) Regulations 2000 (“the P&M Regulations”) so as to assume, when valuing an advertising right, that the sign available for the display of advertising was different from the one actually present.

Insofar as plant and machinery forms part of a sign, Mr Ormondroyd submitted that the P&M Regulations do not overrule the statutory provisions for the valuation of advertising rights. As the Tribunal (Martin Rodger KC and Peter McCrea OBE FRICS FCIArb) confirmed in List (VO) v NRIL [2024] UKUT 351 (LC) at [60] “…advertising hereditaments are governed by their own rules which do not depend on or require consideration of any wider rating principles.”

If, in the alternative, the P&M Regulations are held to be relevant to the valuation of advertising rights, Mr Ormondroyd submitted that their effect must be carefully considered. It is well established that the assumption that “the value of any plant or machinery has no effect on the rent to be so estimated” does not require an assumption that the equipment in question has been “magically removed”: Edmondson VO v Teesside Textiles (1984) 83 LGR 317, affirmed in Cardtronics UK Ltd v Sykes (VO) [2020] UKSC 21 at [32] and it may still be relevant in defining the extent of the hereditament to be valued.

In this case, he submitted, even if the “value” of the plant and machinery is assumed to have “no effect on the rent” that does not require an assumption that the actual sign is unable to function as a digital sign and must be rated as if it were a static sign. Rather, it can be assumed that the plant and machinery would be available to the tenant to allow him to make use of the sign and the hereditament should be valued on the same basis, as relating to a digital sign, whether or not the P&M Regulations are held to be relevant.

In the absence of any respondents in this appeal, I accept Mr Ormondroyd’s submissions that the P&M Regulations are not relevant to the valuation of digital advertising rights on bus shelters.