Valuation Office Agency – Dawn Bunyan (VO) (appellant) v Fridays Limited (respondent)
Tuesday 13 May 2025
By Appellant’s Notice filed on 23 July 2024 the Appellant (Respondent below) Dawn Bunyan (Valuation Officer), appeals the decision of the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber), judgment being delivered on 31 May 2024.
This is an appeal concerning agricultural exemption for the purposes of business rates.
Fridays Limited (“Fridays”) appealed to the Upper Tribunal a decision by the Valuation Tribunal for England, where their challenge to the entry of three buildings at Chequer Tree Farm in the 2017 non-domestic rating list was dismissed.
Fridays is a major producer of free-range eggs, with significant agricultural operations at Chequer Tree Farm exempt from non-domestic rating.
The issue was whether the three buildings at Chequer Tree Farm should also be exempt from rating as agricultural buildings and whether certain buildings were ‘occupied together with’ agricultural land.
The buildings are used for processing and packaging eggs produced on other farms, with equipment including tractors, trailers, and a combine harvester utilized for farming operations.
The Upper Tribunal allowed Fridays’ appeal, finding that the Egg Packing Centre fell within the statutory exemption that applies to agricultural buildings in paragraph 3 of Schedule 5 to the Local Government Finance Act 1988 (“LGFA 1988”).
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