Upper Tribunal Decision on ATMs

The Lands Chamber (Upper Tribunal) has now ruled on the the longstanding appeal as to whether Cashpoints or Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) are separately rateable. (Perhaps to be precise, the site upon which the ATM sites is rateable as the machine itself is not named in the Plant and Machinery order).

The full decision can be viewed here .

Although a further appeal to the Court of Appeal is likely, the current state of play is that the ratepayers have substantially lost the argument. The Tribunal ruled that most external facing machines (i.e. “holes in the wall” ) should have their own Rateable Value although the door has been left ajar for internal facing machines within shops.

Retailers will not now get an expected £200m refund for past rates and face another £200m in bills for the 2017 Rating List.

On a practical level, the decisions causes us difficulties in settling appeals on “host assessments” (the assessment the ATM was split out of) because if the appeal is successful at the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court, the split in the “family tree” will cease to exist and reductions with later effective dates may be overwritten.