The Gazette 1971

of Nursing to exempt grants to student health visitors does not cover such a case because the payment exceeded threequarters of the student's salary and was not a scholarship. [Clayton (Inspector of Taxes) v Gothorp; Ch. Div.; The Times, 31st March 1971; Plowman J.] Plowman J. dismissed with costs an appeal by Mr. C. Morris Owen, Denbighshire county surveyor, from a decision of the general commissioners who disallowed a deduction of £485 from his taxable income in respect of expenses of travelling to the World Road Congress in Tokyo in 1967 on the ground that the expenditure was not incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily for the purposes of his office. [Owen b Burden (Inspector of Taxes); Ch. Div.; The Times, 26th March 1971.] Words and Phrases Gash awards made to an employee by his employer, over and above his remuneration, for passing professional examinations, were held not to be remuneration for his services as an employee and were not therefore liable to income tax under Case I of Schedule E.

threatening behaviour at West Kirby railway station on 1st May 1970 whereby a breach of the peace was likely to be occasioned, contrary to Section 5 of the Act, and had quashed their convictions. Section 9 of the Act provides: " 'Public place* means any highway, public park or garden, any sea beach, and any public bridge, road, lane, footway, square, court, alley or passage, whether a thoroughfare or not; and includes any open space to which for the time being, the public have or are permitted to have access, whether on payment or otherwise. 'Private premises' means premises to which the public have access (whether on payment or otherwise) only by permission of the owner, occupier, or lessee of the premises." [Cooper and Others v Shield; Q.B.D.; The Times, 5th April 1971; D.C.] Tax A loan by West Riding County Council to an employee to attend a health visitors' course on condition that she worked for the council for eighteen months after its completion when the .loan would become irrecoverable, was held to give rise to a liability to income tax as an emolument under Schedule E. The agreement between the Revenue and the Royal College

Higher prices for freeholds Leaseholders, who qualify tp buy the freehold of their houses under the Leasehold Reform Act, are facing higher price demands from their landlords and in some cases dogged resistance to selling, despite the law.

lease. Modern ground rents are calculated as a stage in valuing the site. "It is producing harsh valuations for people with leases nearing expiry," said Mrs. Sims. Those with a substantial amount of their lease to run were little affected. Widows, who were looking to the fifty-year extension instead of buying, could find themselves in the position of having to ask the social services to pay their ground rents to keep a roof over their heads, she said. Modern rents were being assessed that were three times the rateable value of the property. Yet to qualify to buy a freehold under the Act, the present ground rent did not have to be more than two-thirds of the rateable value of the house and land. It was causing "grave inflation" of land values at a time when the Government wanted to keep prices in check, she added. In one recent case a modern ground rent for a terrace house in South-West London was fixed at £450 a year, while the previous rent was £2.25 a year and its rateable value £146. The price for the freehold was fixed at £7,600. Mrs. Sims said although there had been many favour- able settlements for tenants, particularly in parts of London and South Wales, she thought leaseholders were being put off by the high prices asked by some landlords and fears of having to take their case to the Lands Tribunal if they could not reach settlement. Cost of a Lands Tribunal case could be several hun- dred pounds and in some cases tenants had been forced to pay costs, even though they had succeeded in getting the price demanded by the landlords much reduced. Since the Act came into force in January 1968 twenty- seven cases had been decided by the Lands Tribunal. Of the 246 cases lodged by the end of March, 142 had been withdrawn or settled. The Daily Telegraph (3rd May 1971)

Landlords have been encouraged to hold out for increased prices following a series of Lands Tribunal decisions in their favour, when high modern ground rents were assessed in the tribunal's fixing of the free- hold price. In one case recently county court action had to be started against a landlord in North London who refused to part with a freehold of a terrace house at a price of £620 fixed by the Lands Tribunal. The case—the first to test the powers of a leaseholder under the Act to compel a landlord to sell him the freehold land—was to have been heard at Clerkenwell County Court on Thursday, but was settled last week when the landlord backed down. A spokesman for Davies and Davies, agents for the landlords, a firm of accountants in the city, which owned several properties in Ossian Road, North Lon- don, said their clients believed they were entitled to do everything possible to recover the money on the property which they had bought as an investment and which they were now being forced to sell at a loss. High modern ground rents assessed in recent cases to come before the Lands Tribunal were described to me as "horrifying" by Mrs. Winifred Sims, a spokesman for the Leaseholders' Association of Great Britain. They tended, she claimed, to negate the purpose of the Act, which was introduced by the last Government to enable long lease-holders to buy the freeholds of their houses at a price that excluded the value of the bricks and mortar. In assessing the price to be paid, the Lands Tribunal has to calculate the value of the site to the landlord at the expiry of the lease, subject to the tenant's right under the Act to claim a fifty-year extension of his

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