Land, Valuation and Housing Tribunals

Current project status

• Initiation: Could include discussing scope and terms of reference with lead Government Department
• Pre-consultation: Could include approaching interest groups and specialists, producing scoping and issues papers, finalising terms of project
• Consultation: Likely to include consultation events and paper, making provisional proposals for comment
• Policy development: Will include analysis of consultation responses. Could include further issues papers and consultation on draft Bill
• Reported: Usually recommendations for law reform but can be advice to government, scoping report or other recommendations

This project is complete. Our recommendations were rejected

The purpose of this project was to consider how the work of a group of tribunals should be organised.

In August 2001, the report of an review of tribunals chaired by Sir Andrew Leggatt was published. It proposed a unified tribunals service, divided into several “divisions”. In his report, Sir Andrew recommended that we be asked to consider a group of tribunals concerned with land, valuation and housing. The project was referred to us in November 2002.

The project

The project was concerned with:

• The Adjudicator to HM Land Registry
• The Agricultural Lands Tribunal
• The Commons Commissioners
• The Lands Tribunal
• The Leasehold Valuation Tribunal
• The Rent Assessment Committees
• The Rent Tribunal
• The Valuation Service

In our report, “Land, Valuation and Housing Tribunals: The Future (Law Com 281), which we published in September 2003, we recommended that the tribunals should be grouped together into a generic Property and Valuation Tribunal and a reformed Lands Tribunal. The former would be composed of all of the tribunals except for the Commons Commissioners and the Adjudicator, who would be absorbed into the Lands Tribunal. The latter would retain its existing first instance jurisdiction and also act as an appellate tribunal to the new Property and Valuation Tribunal.

Our report was informed by a consultation we held in December 2002.