VO may grant disabled-persons rates exemption without every test passed

A property used wholly for a qualifying disabled-persons purpose can be exempt from non-domestic rating even though not every annotated test in the Valuation Office Agency manual is separately passed.GOV Where all users of a property are disabled and its use is in line with one of sub-paragraphs 16(1)(a) to 16(1)(d) of Schedule 5 to the Local Government Finance Act 1988, the Valuation Officer is able to grant exemption.GOV That qualifies the test-by-test annotation of paragraph 16.

Paragraph 16(1) exempts a hereditament to the extent it consists of property used wholly for: provision of facilities for training, or keeping suitably occupied, persons who are disabled or have suffered illness; provision of welfare services for disabled persons; provision of facilities under section 15 of the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944; or provision of a workshop or other facilities under section 3(1) of the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1958. Disabled status turns, in England from 1 April 2015, on paragraph 16(1A) with the Equality Act 2010 section 6 definition, and in Wales from 6 April 2016 on paragraph 16(2); illness has the section 275 National Health Service Act 2006 meaning and welfare services are those of a kind providable under section 29 of the National Assistance Act 1948.

The standing instruction to seek Technical Adviser advice whenever the amended definitions become contentious or the material day predates 1 April 2015 in England or 6 April 2016 in Wales is gone.GOV Referral duties that remain include contentious de minimis disputes over time or space attributed to non-qualifying use or users, assisted daily living unit cases, and doubts over whether the of a kind formula in paragraph 16(4) embraces facilities provided under later legislation such as the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 or the Care Act 2014.

The extent rule is stated more tentatively: the words to the extent that have been, to date, construed in a purely spatial contextGOV, so an identifiable part of a hereditament used wholly for a qualifying purpose can be exempt even though the rest is not, including a relatively small but not de minimis partGOV. The wholly test remains one of fact and degree under Samaritans of Tyneside, Chilcott, Reid and Tully with section 67(5) of the 1988 Act setting the end-of-day reference point. Activities wholly incidental to the qualifying purpose do not defeat exemption, and de minimis occasional temporary wider use is disregarded; if more than a de minimis number of users are not disabled, the test fails.

Each case turns on its own facts, engagement with the occupier should start early, and the Disabled Exemption form of return (Appendix 1 and 2 for England, 3 and 4 for Wales) is the tool, with claim information sought through the specimen letter and form. Appendix 6 lists the enquiries: users, occupier, authorising statute, stated and actual activities, staffing, regime, and room-by-room use at the material day. Assisted daily living units do not qualify under paragraph 16(1)(a) unless they are a genuine aftercare facility providing training in the Halliday sense; assessment by occupational therapists or physiotherapy-type intervention alone is not training, though such units may fall under paragraph 16(1)(b) by reference to section 29 of the 1948 Act.

Legal basis: Local Government Finance Act 1988, Schedule 5, paragraph 16; Equality Act 2010, section 6.