Steven Stuart Q.C. and Graham Dunlop of Terra Firma Chambers successfully represented the defender in the recent case of Cosmopolitan Bellshill Ltd and Another v North Lanarkshire Council [2012] CSOH 141.

This decision addressed an issue of importance to Councils as rating authorities and non-domestic ratepayers. Schedule 3 to the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966 sets out a procedure involving the service of a completion notice for the purpose of attracting liability to pay rates in respect of newly erected and unoccupied buildings. It enables a deemed date of completion to be fixed which in turn has the effect of determining a date when the building is deemed to have become unoccupied. Unoccupied buildings attract rates at 50% of the level which would be paid if the building were occupied.

In this case rates at the reduced level for unoccupied subjects were paid over a 5 year period in respect of a newly erected building but the ratepayer sought repayment on the grounds that no completion notice had been served by the rating authority following completion of the building. They maintained that this was a prerequisite for liability. The Council argued that it was not necessary to have served a notice where it was otherwise clear and not in dispute that the building was complete, capable of occupation but unoccupied.

Lord Hodge agreed with the Council, holding that completion notice procedure was not the only way in which it might be established that a building was complete. The notice procedure was simply an additional basis on which an undisputed deemed date of completion could be established and liability for rates as an unoccupied subject could arise.