Humphrey v Fenland District Council

An appeal from a valuation tribunal under regulation 43 of the The Valuation Tribunal for England (Council Tax and Rating Appeals) (Procedure) Regulations 2009 is confined to questions of law. The court will not re-evaluate factual findings or substitute its assessment of the evidence unless the tribunal applied the wrong legal test, reached a perverse conclusion, or failed to address a relevant consideration.

An appeal lodged substantially out of time will ordinarily be struck out unless a good reason for the delay is shown. The court may nevertheless consider the apparent merits, but an unexplained and serious delay will require exceptional justification.

The appellant appealed against a valuation tribunal decision that she was liable for council tax because a bungalow in Wisbech was her sole or main residence. She accepted that she owned the property but disputed residing there, maintaining that it was occupied by a tenant and that she lived elsewhere.

The tribunal’s decision was notified on 10 July 2017. The appeal notice was not received until approximately five months later. The central issues were whether the delay should be excused and, if so, whether the tribunal had made an error of law in assessing residence, the burden of proof, the evidence and an alleged procedural unfairness concerning a video.

1. Delay. Regulation 43 gives the court discretion to strike out a late appeal. Although it is not expressed as a conventional time limit, consistency with other appellate regimes requires the court ordinarily to strike out an appeal lodged after the prescribed period unless a good reason is shown. The approach should reflect the principles summarised in Denton, including the seriousness of the breach, the reason for it and the importance of compliance.
2. The delay was approximately five months beyond the most favourable calculation. It was unexplained, despite the appellant being given an opportunity to address it. It was a serious breach in the context of provisions intended to ensure that tribunal decisions are challenged promptly. No exceptional reason justified allowing the appeal to proceed.
3. Scope of the appeal. The appeal was on a question of law only. The court could not reconsider factual findings, reassess credibility or substitute its own view of the evidence. An error of law might arise from applying the wrong test, reaching a perverse conclusion, or taking account of an irrelevant matter or omitting a relevant matter.
4. The valuation tribunal correctly treated the council as bearing the burden of proving residence on the balance of probabilities. Its reference to the appellant not having disproved residence did not reverse that burden. The tribunal applied the reasonable-bystander approach identified in Williams v Horsham District Council, and the weight given to the evidence was for the tribunal.
5. The tribunal was entitled to make findings from incomplete evidence and to select the date of the appellant’s entry into the country as the start of occupation. The complaints about the appellant’s presence at the property, post, electoral registration and vehicles merely challenged the weight of the evidence.
6. There may have been criticism of the tribunal’s apparent reliance on a council summary of a video. However, the video evidence was not materially relied on beyond establishing that the appellant had been present at the property. Any procedural defect therefore caused no unfairness affecting the result.
7. The appeal had no merit and was struck out.

• High Court (Administrative Court): Appeal from a valuation tribunal decision. The appeal was struck out as substantially out of time and, in any event, lacking merit.