Mothballed tungsten mine stays in rating list, Lands Chamber rules

An open-cast tungsten mine that had stopped processing ore stays in the 2017 rating listNationalarchives despite disclaimed environmental permits and disconnected mains electricity. The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) allowed the valuation officer's appealNationalarchives and dismissed the ratepayer's cross-appealNationalarchives, reversing the Valuation Tribunal's directionNationalarchives deleting the Hemerdon MineNationalarchives near Plymouth, listed at £477,000, from the list for 17 July 2019 to 30 November 2022Nationalarchives.

The mine, the United Kingdom's only tungsten mine, was worked from June 2015 until the operator entered administration in October 2018. In March 2019 the Official Receiver disclaimed six environmental permitsNationalarchives covering the waste and processing facilities and surrendered water abstraction licences. The high-voltage 6.5MVA mains supply was switched off in July 2019Nationalarchives. Tungsten West, which acquired the mine in November 2019, applied for fresh licences in August 2021 and received a new permit in June 2024, conditional on noise-mitigation works; a full 6.5MVA supply was restored with effect from 1 December 2022.

The disclaimer of the permits did not render the mine incapable of beneficial occupationNationalarchives. The Tribunal accepted that no new permit could in reality have been obtained without substantial works to cure low-frequency noise from the processing plant's vibrating screens, but Tungsten West accepted that the permit is issued to a particular operator and is accidental to the notional letting on which rating is based (applying Dawkins v Ash), and the Tribunal concluded the mine did not become incapable of beneficial occupation when the permits were disclaimedNationalarchives. The parties agreed the noise-generating screens are non-rateable plant while their supporting steelwork is rateable, and Tungsten West failed to prove that compliant operation required altering any rateable part. Nor could the repair assumption decide the point: the valuation assumptions in the rating legislation govern how a hereditament is valued, not whether one capable of beneficial occupation exists, and mere repair of the screens would not have solved a noise problem that called for redesign and new apparatus.

The power cuts fared no better. The high-voltage supply was cut by tripping breakers and applying safety locks in a substation outside the hereditament, an easily reversible step involving no physical change to the mine itself; the reality principle admits minor alterations rather than imprisoning the hypothetical tenant in a temporary condition, and the valuation-code provisions fixing the state of the locality apply to valuation, not to the prior question of rateability. The low-voltage supplies to the off-site water pumps were found not to have been severed by the 17 July 2019 material day at all, and their reconnection — about a week to arrange, a day's work at each location — would have been the same sort of minor change.

The Tribunal did not need to decide the valuation officer's primary case that aggregate sales of 102,000 tonnes between February 2021 and September 2022, plus office and laboratory use, amounted to rateable occupation in fact. The cross-appeal failed with itNationalarchives: no earlier incapacity from 22 March 2019 and no extension beyond 30 November 2022, the argument that the restored 6.5MVA supply was inadequate for an upgraded plant not having been pursued. The burden remains on whoever seeks deletion to show the circumstances justifying it.

Legal basis: Local Government Finance Act 1988 (sections 41 to 43, 65(2); Schedule 6 paragraphs 2(1), 2(6), 2(7)), John Laing on the ingredients of rateable occupation, and Newbigin v Monk, Dawkins v Ash, Kennet, Post Office v Nottingham, Arbuckle Smith, Porter v Gladman, Cyxtera, BNPPDS and Scottish & Newcastle on beneficial occupation and rateable plant.