A London chambers has failed to show rooms occupied by barristers are individual properties and thus would be entitled to a reduction in business rates.
Martin Rodger KC, deputy chambers president, and Mark Higgin, acknowledged that though the practice of barristers grouping together to occupy sets of chambers is not a recent one, the issue before the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) was a ‘novel one’.
According to the judgment in in Kevin Prosser KC v Andrew Ricketts, under the current regime of small business rate relief, a taxpayer occupying a hereditament with a rateable value not more than £12,000, receives a 100% reduction in their rates bill. ‘That provides an incentive to split a larger hereditament into smaller units where the characteristics of the premises permit it,’ the judgment states.
The case centres on Pump Court Tax Chambers, based in Bedford Row, London, whose members at the time, occupied an annex on two floors of a neighbouring building in Jockey’s Fields (pictured). The premises, from 1 April 2017, was entered as a single hereditament with a rateable value of £152,000.
Kevin Prosser KC, head of Pump Court, proposed the list be altered to split the entry and show each of the rooms occupied by barristers as a separate hereditament. The valuation officer did not support the proposal and the Valuation Tribunal for England agreed. Prosser appealed the decision.
Dismissing the appeal, the Upper Tribunal ruled that chambers’ members are in occupation of the whole of the premises, and not just their separate rooms. The ‘purpose’ of the occupied annex was a ‘shared purpose of all members’ to ‘enable each of them to carry out their individual practices from the same premises and under their collective identity, and to benefit from the joint provision of support and administrative services and the sharing of expenses’.
It concluded: ‘In this case the members of chambers have retained all their rights of occupation while allocating between themselves the use of individual rooms.’
Nicholas Trompeter KC, of Selborne Chambers, appeared for Kevin Prosser KC and Paul Reynolds, of 1 Crown Office Row, was instructed by HMRC Solicitors and appeared for Andrew Ricketts (valuation officer)
