Client: Environment Agency
To prevent potential flooding, the Environment Agency recently built a flood alleviation scheme to supplement the the River Thames in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, called the Jubilee River.
The Environment Agency has a duty to minimise adverse affects of flooding. The area hadn't suffered from serious flooding in over 50 years, but if it had, it would have caused untold damage to homes, businesses and farmland across the area. The Jubilee River was an extensive project that involved the extraction of 2 million tonnes of minerals from the site to create the channel.
The Valuation Office considered the mineral extraction was rateable and that it was a commercial operation; the Environmental Agency was told to pay up.
Our Minerals Team disputed this and attempted to negotiate a rates reduction. This was not possible and the Environment Agency agreed that we should pursue our appeals to Valaution Tribunal. We argued that the project was not rateable and so should not be liable for rates. And even if it was rateable, the rateable value should be zero because the client was not making any money by selling gravel from the scheme.
The Valuation Tribunal determined that the mineral removal was not rateable; so our rationale won the case, and in so doing saved our client half a million pounds in rates bills.
|
|