The Non-Domestic Rating (Alteration of Lists and Appeals) (Wales) Regulations 2005

Evidence: general

31.—(1) This regulation applies to information supplied in pursuance of regulation 42 or paragraph 5 of Schedule 9 to the Act or section 82 of the General Rate Act 1967.

(2) Subject to the provisions of this regulation, information to which this regulation applies shall in any relevant proceedings be admissible as evidence of any fact stated in it; and any record purporting to contain such information shall, unless the contrary is shown, be presumed —

(a) to have been supplied by the person by whom it purports to have been supplied;

(b) to have been supplied by that person in any capacity in which it purports to have been supplied.

(3) Information to which this regulation applies shall not be used in any relevant proceedings by a valuation officer unless —

(a) not less than three weeks' notice has previously been given to every other party to the proceedings.

(b) the notice specifies in relation to any information to be so used —

(i) the documents or other media in or on which that information is held;

(ii) the hereditament or hereditaments to which it relates, and the rateable value or rateable values in the list current at the date of the notice;

(iii) the name and address of the person providing the information; and

(iv) a summary of the terms of any lease (including the rent, dates of rental reviews and description of the repairing obligations); and

(c) any person who has given not less than 24 hours' notice of his intention to do so, has been permitted by that officer at any reasonable time —

(i) to inspect the documents or other media in or on which such information is held; and

(ii) to make a copy of, or of any extract from, any document containing such information.

(4) Subject to paragraph (5), any person to whom notice relating to any hereditament has been given under paragraph (3)(a) may before the hearing serve notice on the valuation officer specifying other hereditaments as being hereditaments which are comparable in character or otherwise relevant to that person’s case, and requiring the valuation officer —

(a) to permit him at any reasonable time specified in the notice to inspect and (if they so desire) to make a copy of any document containing information to which this regulation applies which relates to those other hereditaments and is in the possession of the valuation officer; and

(b) to produce at the hearing or to submit to the valuation tribunal such documents as before the hearing they have informed the valuation officer that they require.

(5) The number of hereditaments specified in a notice under paragraph (4) shall not exceed four, or if greater, the number specified in the notice under paragraph (3)(a).

(6) Nothing in the foregoing provisions of this regulation shall be construed as requiring the making available for inspection or copying, or the production of, any document insofar as it contains information other than information —

(a) constituting direct evidence of the rent payable in respect of the specified hereditaments, or

(b) which is otherwise reasonably required for the purposes of the relevant proceedings.

(7) Where a notice has been given to the valuation officer under paragraph (4), and the valuation officer refuses or fails to comply with the notice, the person who gave the notice may apply to the valuation tribunal or, as the case may be, the arbitrator appointed to determine the appeal; and that tribunal or arbitrator may, if satisfied that it is reasonable to do so, direct the valuation officer to comply with the notice as respects all the hereditaments or such of them as the tribunal or arbitrator may determine.

(8) In this regulation “relevant proceedings” means any proceedings on or in consequence of an appeal, and any proceedings on or in consequence of a reference to arbitration under regulation 38.

(9) If any information required to be made available for inspection in accordance with this regulation is not maintained in documentary form, the duty to make it so available is satisfied if a print-out, photographic image or other reproduction of the document which has been obtained from the storage medium adopted in relation to the document is made available for inspection.