Royal College of Nursing v St Marylebone Borough Council

For rating relief under Rating and Valuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1955, each main object of an organisation must satisfy the statutory requirements. The objects must be construed from the governing instrument as a whole; actual activities and their results are irrelevant. Advancing a profession may be charitable where its true purpose is to improve the quality and range of public services. Better pay, conditions or status for practitioners may be means or incidental benefits, rather than the organisation’s ends. The distinction is between advancing nursing through public service and advancing nurses’ private interests.

The St Marylebone Corporation appealed against the Divisional Court’s dismissal of a case-stated appeal from Quarter Sessions. The Royal College of Nursing claimed rating relief under section 8 of the Rating and Valuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1955 for hereditaments occupied by the College.

Quarter Sessions found that the College’s main objects were those in Article II(B)(a) and (b) of its Charter. It considered both objects charitable, and the Divisional Court upheld that conclusion. The central issue was whether promoting the advance of nursing as a profession meant advancing nursing services or advancing the interests of nurses.

1. Disposition. The Court of Appeal gave a unanimous judgment dismissing the appeal, with costs. Leave to appeal was granted only on terms preserving the costs orders made in the Court of Appeal and below.
2. Under section 8 of the Rating and Valuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1955, where an organisation has more than one main object, each main object must satisfy one of the statutory descriptions. Once the main objects are identified, compliance is a question of construction. The governing instrument must be read as a whole and in context. The court is not concerned with the organisation’s actual activities or the results of those activities. The court followed the approach stated in General Nursing Council for England and Wales v St Marylebone Borough Council [1959] 2 WLR 308.
3. Article II(B)(b), promoting the advance of nursing as a profession, was construed as advancing nursing rather than advancing the private interests of nurses. The words as a profession did not create a trade-union or status objective. In context, advancing a profession meant improving the quality and range of nursing services and encouraging more and better-qualified entrants. Improvements in pay and conditions could be means to that public end, but were not the end itself. The Charter’s language and overall tenor supported that construction, consistent with the reasoning in the Royal College of Surgeons case [1952] AC 631.
4. Incidental benefits to members do not prevent an object from being charitable where those benefits are necessary or desirable means of serving public objects. The court applied the principles illustrated by Institute of Civil Engineers v Commissioners of Inland Revenue [1932] 1 KB 149 and Geologists Association v Commissioners of Inland Revenue 14 Tax Cases 871.
5. Both main objects were therefore charitable and the College qualified for rating relief. The court found it unnecessary to decide whether the objects were alternatively concerned with education or social welfare.

1. Court of Appeal dismissed the Corporation’s appeal from the Divisional Court, with costs: [1959] EWCA Civ 1.
2. Divisional Court dismissed the Corporation’s case-stated appeal after remitting the case to Quarter Sessions for more precise answers, and upheld the conclusion that the College’s main objects qualified.
3. Court of Quarter Sessions for the County of London allowed the College’s appeal against the Corporation’s rejection of its claim to rating relief and found its main objects charitable.