The High Court has ordered the Commissioner of Valuation to be joined as a notice party in a judicial review brought by eight nursing home operators against the Valuation Tribunal. The ruling addresses who may participate in the proceedings; it does not decide the operators’ challenge to the Tribunal’s decision.
The operators are seeking to overturn a preliminary decision made in their appeals against the inclusion of their nursing homes in the valuation list. They argued before the Tribunal that nursing homes were not “relevant property” and were exempt from valuation and rates. They also contended that residents had to be served with the relevant papers. The Tribunal rejected that service argument, finding it had no obligation under section 36 of the Valuation Act 2001 to serve documents on residents or other people identified by the operators.
The operators then sought judicial review, including an order quashing the Tribunal’s decision. The Tribunal chose not to participate in those proceedings. The Commissioner, who issued valuation certificates for the homes in 2017, applied to be joined as a notice party or respondent. The operators opposed the application, arguing that the Commissioner had not shown he was “directly affected” as required by the court rules.
The Commissioner submitted that he had a vital interest in the outcome and that, without him or the Tribunal opposing the judicial review, there would be no “legitimus contradictor”—a party arguing against the operators’ application.
Mr Justice Meenan found that the Commissioner would be directly affected by the result. If the Tribunal’s decision were quashed, the Commissioner would need to serve the relevant documents on each person living in the homes to carry out his statutory duties, the judge said. The court was told there were about 437 private nursing homes nationwide, with more than 20,000 residents.
The judge granted the joinder application and directed that the Commissioner be added as a notice party. The underlying judicial review remains unresolved in this judgment. As the judgment was delivered electronically, the parties were given 14 days to make submissions on costs; the court did not determine costs in the order recorded here.