“…it will be like picking you up and putting you down over there”
“ As at12 June 2001 Mrs Carole Kennerly and Mr. Wayne Prielipp agree to pay Beechcroft Farm Retirement Benefit Fund all back rent prior to September 1999, for 15 stables that they used from1 March 1999 to1 September 1999 , a further 10 stables from1 July 1999 to1 September 1999 at£10 per stable and planning fees to Graham Simpkin and Gravesham Borough Council totalling£19,704.82 . With the proviso that the back rent for the stables or fees to Graham Simpkin and Gravesham Borough Council are only payable if the compensation claim to Union Rail for the relocation to The Whitehorse Riding Centre, Whitehorse Lane, Harvel, Nr Meopham, Kent exceeds the sum of£70,000 (seventy thousand pounds). In addition they further agree to pay£10 per stable rent from1 September 1999 onwards for 38 stables, 4 of which were not available until1 December 1999 and 9 of which were not available until16 October 2000 . They further agree that when the indoor school is completed and ready for use, the cost of the stables will increase to£15 per stable. All rent arrears to be paid 30 days after the compensation for relocation is received from Union Rail. They also agree to pay any rates that are charged on the property during their occupation”
“[that replacement stables] if unavailable locally will result in the loss of the riding stables as a community resource. The effect could be mitigated by providing assistance for relocation to an alternative site”
“Where land is, and but for the compulsory acquisition would continue to be, devoted to a purpose of such a nature that there is no general demand or market for that purpose, the compensation may, if the Lands Tribunal is satisfied that reinstatement in some other place is bona fide intended, be allowed on the basis of the reasonable cost of equivalent reinstatement”
“Reinstatement is usually resorted to in cases where the displaced undertaking was some non-productive enterprise such as the church or a hospital which was not intended to make a profit but to perform some public service to the community which could not equally well be performed in another situation”
“…the word ‘general’ applies only to demand. It does not qualify ‘market’. The underlying concept is that there cannot be a market unless both supply and demand exist, but there may be a general demand although there is no supply. In that case the demand will be unsatisfied”
“…it follows, I think, beyond any doubt that if the undertaking in question is a business undertaking, then the question of the relation between the cost of reinstatement and the value of the undertaking is relevant and may be paramount in considering the question of reasonableness”. 36 Harman LJ expressed the principle (at 261) as : “The point was emphasised, as I have already said, that this was not a hobby but a commercial venture, and I do not see why the Tribunal should not accept that view and it seems to me that, looking at the matter from that point of view, it is quite clear that it would be commercially ridiculous to spend£180,000 in diverting a railway when there was no hope whatever that profits sufficient to pay it would ever be earned.”
“What the authorities (to which I need not refer to in detail) very clearly establish, however, is that when an occupier, whether residential or business, does, in consequence of disturbance, rehouse himself in alternative accommodation, prima facie, he is not entitled to recover, by way of compensation for disturbance or otherwise, any part of the purchase price that he pays for the alternative accommodation to which he removes, whether the accommodation is better or worse than, or equivalent to, the property from which he is being evicted. The reason for that is that there is a presumption in law - albeit a rebuttable presumption – that the purchase price paid for the new premises is something for which the claimant has received value for money. If he has made a good bargain, and acquired premises that have a value in excess of what he has paid for them, that is not something for which the acquiring authority is entitled to any credit. If the claimant has made a bad bargain and has paid a great deal more for the new premises to which he is moving than they are really worth, that is not something for which the acquiring authority can properly be charged”
“The situation of the land for the specified use must be governed by the nature of the use and that where this involves the resort of people to it, regard will realistically be had to where those people reside; in essence where are the customers and those associated with them who will be seeking the facilities to be provided? A community hospital and various types of school will need to be located convenient to the population they are to serve…”
“The expense and any losses (the claimant) incurs in moving his business to a new site will ordinarily be the measure of the special loss he sustains by being deprived of the land and disturbed in his enjoyment of it” and he went on to state that the value of the land and the disturbance loss were: “strictly in law… no more than two inseparable elements of a single whole in that together they make up the value of the land to the owner”
“Office The amount claimed is£194.75 . The items under this innocent heading appear to relate to the cost of second-hand timber and doors used to prevent entry by the sheriff’s bailiff. I do not allow this item. Nor do I allow the amount of£84.32 claimed by the acquiring authority in respect of the sheriff’s fees and removal contractors’ fees which they suggest should be offset against the claim”
“…but in case I be found wrong in law in respect of the determination of ‘purpose’ it is appropriate, because the evidence was before me, that I consider whether there is a general demand or market for land for a residential care home for elderly people. On the authority of Harrison that investigation falls to be undertaken as a contemporary exercise at the relevant date, which in this reference by consent I take to be at or about the date of the hearing. The search is for a general current demand, not a future or latent demand, or one which is intermittent and rarely emerges, Lord Fraser in Harrison. On the authority of Harrison the word ‘general’ qualifies demand but not market and land means not only the reference land but land in general. By way of summarising the position under rule (5) Lord Fraser in Harrison adopted with approval the following paragraph from the judgment of Waller LJ in Wilkinson: Rule (5) provides, however, that there must be no general demand or market for land for that purpose. This indicates to me that it is not sufficient that there 50 should be a demand for the land in question but there should be a general demand i.e. a demand not only for that land but for other land elsewhere for the same purpose. Furthermore, the use of the word ‘market’ connotes, in my opinion, something more than the fact that there are potential users of the land for the named purpose; it connotes that there is buying and selling for that purpose. In Wilkinson, Sir David Cairns said, when dealing with the absence of a market, “It has to be established that practically no sales for that purpose take place in the area…I should not consider the fact that an isolated transaction has taken place would constitute a ‘market’”
“A business has several attributes. These include the goods or services it supplies, its management and staff, its suppliers, its customers, its location, its reputation, its name. When a business closes down at one site and reopens elsewhere, there is usually no difficulty in knowing whether, in practical terms, it is the same business or not. Take a simple example. A restaurant in Soho is forced to close when its premises are taken over. On the following day the same management opens a new restaurant of the same style nearby, under the same name and employing the same staff. That would be the case of the same business operating from a new location. That would be so even if there were an interval of a few days or weeks before the restaurant opened at the new site. The matter would stand differently if, four or five years after the Soho restaurant was shut, the same management opened a new restaurant outside London. That could not be regarded as the same business. It would rather be a case of one business having closed down and, some years later, the same management having set itself up in the same line of business again. In between these two extremes would be examples that would not be so clear cut. In each case it is a question of fact and degree whether the new business has retained sufficient attributes of the old business for the new business sensibly to be regarded as the old business at a new site or, which comes to the same, as a continuation of the old business at a new site”
“I was asked to look at certain previous decisions of the Tribunal, but, as I have said and emphasised before, decisions are only relevant to arguments on law or procedure. The assessment of compensation must be decided on, and only on, the evidence. Useful though the respective valuers’ calculations are in assisting me to reach a decision in this matter, I do not propose to determine each item in dispute. How can I, for example, say what is the appropriate years’ purchase when on the evidence I can choose any number between 1.5 and 10 without any evidence which I should use ipse dixit of each of the valuers? I propose, therefore, to adopt a robust approach similar to that used by the courts in assessing general damages and to award a sum which, in my judgment, in all the circumstances is reasonable. It seems to me that my function is comparable to that of the courts in assessing damages for loss of future earnings”