Halpern & Ors v Greater London Authority

On an application for permission to appeal a specialist tribunal’s compensation determination, an appellate court must keep within points of law. The tribunal remains the final arbiter of fact, and its assessment of evidential weight does not disclose an error of law merely because the appellate court might have reached a different view. A fair hearing requires intelligible reasons for factual conclusions, not a detailed rejection of every contrary piece of evidence. Permission may nevertheless be granted where the evidence arguably provided a basis for a proportionate assessment, and there is a real prospect that the tribunal wrongly treated evidential uncertainty as preventing any assessment. Permission was refused on the development-value challenge but granted on the business-extinguishment challenge.

Halpern & Ors v Greater London Authority concerned three compensation references arising from the compulsory acquisition of land for the Olympic Park. The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber), in its decision of 15 May 2014, valued the land on an existing-use basis with a 15% uplift for long-term development hope value. It also rejected a claim that the compulsory purchase had totally extinguished the operator’s waste-management business and found no sound basis for awarding compensation for a lesser proportion.

The applicants sought permission to appeal on two alleged errors of law: the treatment of development-value evidence and the refusal to quantify partial business extinguishment. The central questions were whether the Upper Tribunal had exceeded the limits of permissible fact-finding and reasoning, and whether the second ground had a real prospect of success.

Lord Justice Briggs, determining an oral renewal of the application for permission to appeal, held as follows.

1. Development value. Appeals from determinations of the Upper Tribunal in compulsory-purchase compensation cases are confined to points of law. The Upper Tribunal is the final arbiter of fact, and its decision, as that of a specialist tribunal operating in a technically difficult field, is entitled to substantial respect unless clearly vitiated by an error of law. The weight assigned to evidence is pre-eminently a matter for the Upper Tribunal. An appellate court’s view that it would have weighed the evidence differently is insufficient.
2. A fair hearing requires intelligible reasons for the tribunal’s factual conclusions. It does not require a detailed explanation of why every item of contrary evidence was rejected. Reasons may consist in a finding that particular evidence was compelling. The evidence, taken in combination, provided a sufficient basis for the Upper Tribunal’s conclusion that development would not have been viable before wider development at Stratford City and Carpenters Road. Ground 1 therefore disclosed no real prospect of success, and permission was refused on that ground.
3. Business extinguishment. The finding that the business had not been totally extinguished was not challenged. However, there was evidence from which the Upper Tribunal could have made a rough and ready comparison, including the equipment sold at auction, the assets and goodwill transferred to OS Hire as a going concern, and the price ultimately paid for that business. It was arguable that evidential uncertainty and unreliability should not have led the tribunal effectively to conclude that no proportionate assessment below 100% could be made.
4. The threshold for permission to appeal was relatively low. Ground 2 raised a sufficient case to establish a real prospect of success. Limited permission was therefore granted on ground 2 only.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On 9 July 2015, the court refused permission to appeal on the development-value ground and granted limited permission on the business-extinguishment ground.
2. Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber): On 15 May 2014, the tribunal determined three compensation references arising from the compulsory acquisition, valuing the land by reference to existing use and hope value and rejecting the claim for total or partial business extinguishment.