Supreme Court to rule next week in case on rates and service of completion notice

The Supreme Court will next week (17 December) hand down its ruling in a case on the service of a completion notice by a billing authority.

At issue in UKI (Kingsway) Limited (Respondent) v Westminster City Council (Appellant) – UKSC 2017/0132 was the validity of the service of a completion notice under Schedule 4A of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 by Westminster on the respondent, the freehold owner of a building in Kingsway, WC2.

Westminster is the billing authority responsible for the collection of non-domestic rates in the City of Westminster.

Following redevelopment of the building, the council delivered by hand to a receptionist at the building, a completion notice specifying a completion date of 1 June 2012, addressed to ‘The Owner’.

The receptionist transmitted a scanned copy of the notice to the respondent.

UKI (Kingsway) challenged the entry of the premises into the 2010 Rating List with a rateable value of £2.75m from 1 June 2012 on the ground, amongst others, that the completion notice had not been validly served.

In UKI (Kingsway) Ltd v Westminster City Council [2017] EWCA Civ 430 the Court of Appeal found in favour of UKI (Kingsway).

Lady Justice Gloster said the case raised “a point of practical importance regarding the serving of completion notices and as to the general approach to the construction of statutory schemes which require notification to be given but do not provide a prescriptive and exhaustive code as to how to do so”.

She concluded that the President of the Valuation Tribunal had been correct to hold that the completion notice had not been properly served and that, accordingly, it was not effective to determine a completion date of 1 June 2012 under the 1988 Act. Lady Justice Macur and Lady Justice King agreed.

A five-justice panel of the Supreme Court – comprising Lady Hale, Lord Kerr, Lord Carnwath, Lord Lloyd-Jones and Lord Kitchin – heard the case on 6 November.