Councils face an estimated combined bill of up to £500m to refund supermarkets after the Court of Appeal ruled that cash machines should not be assessed separately for business rates.
Retailers Tesco, Sainsbury’s and the Co-operative Group along with ATM’s operator Cardtronics Europe have won their challenge to a 2010 decision by the Valuation Office Agency to create separate hereditaments for the sites of supermarket cash machines.
There could be up to 50,000 appeals which could now be granted as a result of the Appeal Court decision. The judgement said that the creation of separate assessments for the business rates for cash machine sites had not been accompanied by a reduction in the rateable value of the supermarkets hosting them.
The VOA has 28 days to partition the Supreme Court to review the decision, and a statement from the office said: “We are considering the implications of the Court of Appeal decision”.
It was feared that if the VOA had been successful in the appeal, this could have opened the floodgates to assess up to 400,000 vending operations which could have been extremely difficult both for the retailers and the operators.
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For further information contact:
Howard Elliott
Baker Davidson Thomas
E-mail: howard.elliott@bdt.uk.com
Telephone: 01256 840 777
16th November 2018
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