City of London Court Claim for 11,000 pounds for artists storage, no idea what to do.

[ploddertom]

Re: City of London Court Claim for 11,000 pounds for artists storage, no idea what to

I don't think it actually works like that and that is the challenge. For rating purposes, the whole area designated by the valuation officer is considered occupied and hence is taxed. So, joking aside, you need to find a loophole and it does need to be within their exceptions.

There are different values for different areas so if using an Office space for storage @ £500 per sq m worth appealing to see if it can be downgraded to Storage @ £350 per sq m. thus saving on what is owed. Difficult to try and second guess as don't know the property or how it is designated.

[giordanobruno]

Re: City of London Court Claim for 11,000 pounds for artists storage, no idea what to

Yes thanks, I contacted a Solicitor yesterday, I hope they come up with something convincing. I have written a forelock-tugging plea to Kit Malthouse.

[giordanobruno]

Re: City of London Court Claim for 11,000 pounds for artists storage, no idea what to

Ploddertom do you mean appealing to the valuations office , in spite of the fact I have moved out?

[des8]

Re: City of London Court Claim for 11,000 pounds for artists storage, no idea what to

I understand that I need a tenable legal argument, I can't just whinge about how unreasonable it is!
Re Des8's point. I was there 9 months, does that not work for me?

As MissFM indicated , here in Wales time seems to be more elastic.
I've been about to retile our kitchen, but have only had the tiles a short time (about 15 years) !

Two other points: i)are you and the other tenants being chased for £11000 each, or is this your portion of the rates due? As LL is running his business from there , is he paying a proportion of the rates?
ii)according to post 1 your original contract is ambiguous about liability for NDR, the landlord had access for the purpose of running his business & the contract extention (according to the council) confirms you are liable.

Does your contract extention differ from the original contract? If it does, could that not be used to argue that for the first period the landlord (who is running his business from there)
the landlord was responsible for the rates? The contract was deliberately altered to change liability.

These are just questions, I don't know if there is any mileage in them, but I'm sure others will.

[ploddertom]

Re: City of London Court Claim for 11,000 pounds for artists storage, no idea what to

Ploddertom do you mean appealing to the valuations office , in spite of the fact I have moved out?

It would be more than help ful if you could give us an idea of what & how you are being charged, what are the premises being described as, how many rooms etc. Doesn't matter if you have moved as if you were being charged wrongly you can still appeal. Each commercial property I have moved into I have also appealed the valuation and have to date had them reduced - in one case by 50% - as we were being charged for areas that had either changed use, a different size or not in use at all. Never take the VOA at face value. Fortunately due to different Rate Relief I pay no business rates at all now up until at least end of 2015/2016 financial year.

[giordanobruno]

Re: City of London Court Claim for 11,000 pounds for artists storage, no idea what to

Dear Des8, the 11000 is my privilege. The others have their own bills to suffer.
The LL office is in the building, so he must be paying. In fact he came in one day when i was there (without knocking) and made a comment about having 17000 or some figure of the sort to pay.
The 3 months contracts were the same. I received 2 of them as it was not a very official set up, slightly ramshackle. Yes on the one hand it says I 'will be responsible for rates, utilities , water and electricity', on the other hand I have never had a utilities bill, also because there is next to no maintenance of a building set to be demolished. Furthermore there is the other bit in the same contract which says the landlord can have access at any time etc so there is an inherent contradiction.