RatingNon-domestic hereditament - valuation - public houses in shopping centre - lower rents than shops - valuation as public houses and not shopsR F Williams (Valuation Officer) v Scottish and Newcastle Retail Ltd and Another: CA (Lords Justices Aldous, Robert Walker and Hale): 15 February 2001The ratepayers occupied two separate units in a covered shopping centre.

One was a public house and the other partly a public house and partly a licensed cafe bar.

The valuation officer contended that the premises ought to be valued so as to take account of their more lucrative potential as shops but the ratepayers contended that they should be valued simply for what they were.

The Buckinghamshire valuation tribunal found for the valuation officer but the Lands Tribunal reversed that decision.

The valuation officer appealed to the Court of Appeal.David Holgate QC and Timothy Mould (instructed by the Inland Revenue) for the valuation officer.

David Widdicombe QC and Michael Druce (instructed by J P Scrafton, Kennington) for the ratepayers.Held, dismissing the appeal, that a principle of central importance to the case was the rule of rebus sic stantibus (things standing thus); that it was wrong to say that value had to take into account all alternative uses to which the hereditament in its existing state could be put in the real world; but that the principle that the mode of occupation of the hypothetical tenant had to be the same as that of the actual occupation was correct.