Nicola Johnson v The Salvation Army Trustee Company

This is a decision about exemption from non-domestic rating of properties occupied by organisations responsible for public worship. It is an appeal by the Valuation Officer (‘the VO’) against a decision of the Valuation Tribunal for England (‘the VTE’) of 12 November 2025 concerning whether three rooms – a meeting room, a prayer room, and a kitchen - in the former headquarters of the Salvation Army (‘the respondent’) at 101 Newington Causeway, London, SE1 6BN (‘the Property’) should be exempt.

We heard the appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice on 17 September 2026. Mr Luke Wilcox appeared for the VO. Mr Cain Ormondroyd appeared for the respondent, calling Mr Laurence Hatchwell OBE MRICS and Ms Mei Yee Gurrin as witnesses of fact.

The classes of property exempt from non-domestic rating are set out in Schedule 5 to the familiar Local Government Finance Act 1988. Paragraph 11 of the schedule provides:

“(1)

A hereditament is exempt to the extent that it consists of any of the following—

(a)

a place of public religious worship which belongs to the Church of England or the Church in Wales (within the meaning of the Welsh Church Act 1914) or is for the time being certified as required by law as a place of religious worship;

(b)

a church hall, chapel hall or similar building used in connection with a place falling within paragraph (a) above for the purposes of the organisation responsible for the conduct of public religious worship in that place.

(2)

A hereditament is exempt to the extent that it is occupied by an organisation responsible for the conduct of public religious worship in a place falling within sub-paragraph (1)(a) above and—

(a)

is used for carrying out administrative or other activities relating to the organisation of the conduct of public religious worship in such a place; or

(b)

is used as an office or for office purposes, or for purposes ancillary to its use as an office or for office purposes.

(3)

In this paragraph 'office purposes' include administration, clerical work and handling money; and 'clerical work' includes writing, book-keeping, sorting papers or information, filing, typing, duplicating, calculating (by whatever means), drawing and the editorial preparation of matter for publications.”

It is common ground that the respondent is an organisation responsible for the conduct of public worship in various places falling within sub-paragraph 1(a), and that the majority of the Property was used as offices by it on the material day and was therefore exempt under sub-paragraph 2(b) on that basis. However, paragraph 11(2) provides that the hereditament is exempt “to the extent that” it is occupied and used as provided in that sub-section; parts of the hereditament that are not so occupied and used are not exempt.

The Tribunal has considered paragraph 11 recently. In Church of Scientology Religious Education College Inc v Ricketts (VO) [2023] UKUT 1 (LC), the Deputy President and Mr Higgin FRICS were asked to decide whether a number of different parts of two properties occupied by the Church of Scientology were exempt under paragraph 11. The Tribunal decided four issues: first, that the Church’s chapel was a place of public religious worship and exempt under paragraph 11(1)(a). Second, that certain areas were used as offices, with the exception of rooms used for “auditing”, being a form of spiritual counselling and a key religious practice of Scientology. There was no suggestion that auditing was an activity ancillary to office use and the persons being audited were not employees in the office. Third, the Tribunal held that areas used as offices were exempt under paragraph 11(2)(b); there was no need to prove, as the VO argued, that they were used as offices specifically in connection with the organisation of public worship. Fourth, that no parts of the properties in question were exempt as a church hall (etc) under paragraph 11(1)(b). The Tribunal in the Scientology decision did not have to consider the meaning of “purposes ancillary” to office use or to use for office purposes.

As we said above, the Property is the former headquarters of the respondent, and this appeal is about how things stood at the material day which is agreed to be 1 April 2017; the respondent moved to different headquarters in 2023 and has now let most of the Property. In light of that the Tribunal did not make a site visit.

The dispute before the VTE was as to whether a large meeting room or hall on the ground floor of the Property (‘the Hall’), a ninth-floor prayer room (‘the Prayer Room’) and a kitchen fell within the exemption. In its decision of 12 November 2025, the VTE found that the Hall and the Prayer Room were used in a way that was ancillary to office use under sub-paragraph 11(2)(b). It found, on the basis of the respondent’s concession, that the kitchen did not fall within the exemption. However, it is now agreed that the kitchen is exempt from rates under that provision and that the rateable value of the Property must change to that extent. The appeal now concerns the Hall and the Prayer Room.

Floor areas, and helpful valuations in the alternative, are agreed. The Hall has a floor area of 180.78 square metres and the Prayer Room 9.49 square metres. The competing Rateable Values, after rounding, are as follows:

The Property is a ten-storey building and in 2017 accommodated up to 500 members of staff. Below is a plan of the ground floor showing the Hall on the left, and a plan of the ninth floor where the kitchen, servery, store room and toilets (all exempt under paragraph 11(2)(b)) and the Prayer Room (to the right of the plan) are situated.

The Property contained offices, and meeting rooms on eight of its floors; all the meeting rooms except the Hall were conventionally arranged with chairs around a table. The Hall was laid out in a different way as can be seen from the plan; photographs show that it had a dais at the front, a large cross on the wall behind the dais, a moveable cross at one side of the front, a reading lectern and a drum kit. The Hall could accommodate up to 172 people, and the next largest meeting room 38.

The Prayer Room is very small, as is obvious from its area. Photographs which are agreed to be representative of how it was on the material day show a low table, a comfortable chair, a large cross, and a notice board labelled “Prayer Wall”.

Evidence of fact was given by Mrs Mei Yee Gurrin. She was head of Facilities Management at the Property from 2017 to 2022. Her written evidence about the two rooms with which we are concerned was as follows:

“4.

The meeting hall was used as a meeting room by all staff. This space was bookable by staff for meetings, training, organisational presentations and other activities, such as staff town hall meetings, departmental meetings, fire evacuation training, committee meetings, equality and diversity training, and other meetings with a large number of attendees. It was also used for various other ‘one off’ staff events, as well as for the Christmas Carol Service.

5.

Weekly prayer meetings took place for usually no more than 1 hour. All staff were welcome to attend prayers. In providing these meetings (and indeed the ninth-floor prayer room) the Salvation Army was motivated by its desire to promote the spiritual and emotional well-being of its office workers.

6.

All staff were able to use the prayer room for personal spiritual reflection or prayers (for any faith) at any time without advanced booking. The room was very small, to the extent that it was too small to hold any form of group worship.”

At the hearing Mrs Gurrin explained that although there was a booking system for the Hall the records could no longer be accessed because of the respondent’s policy of keeping material only for seven years. But she remembered, because she used to walk the building, that the Hall was in use a lot of the time, and used a lot more for the purposes outlined in her paragraph 4 than for the prayer meetings. As to the Prayer Room Mrs Gurrin said that people of faiths other than Christianity used it, and some staff kept a prayer mat in there. The cross in the Prayer Room is the portable one seen in the Hall in one of the pictures.

We also heard from Mr Laurence Hatchwell MRICS, who is a director of Colliers International but gave evidence of fact only. He provided a description of the Property and photographs of meetings rooms, the Hall and the Prayer Room.

Mr Hatchwell explained that since the VTE decision he had “done further research into the prevalence of prayer/faith rooms in different contexts. They are to my knowledge common in airports and hospitals. And in offices they are far from being unknown.” He provided a copy of an article, undated but referring to material from 2023, which explained and illustrated best practice in the provision of neutral prayer rooms for office staff, avoiding the use of religious symbols but providing for any particular needs such as washing facilities. He listed a number of offices which provided a multi-faith prayer room for their staff.

Mr Hatchwell was asked whether the Prayer Room is the same sort of space as those described in the article, in view of the presence of a large cross and of what appears to be Christian material on the Prayer Wall, and whether for example a Muslim would be comfortable praying in the presence of the cross. He felt that apart from the cross the Prayer Room was a neutral space.

We accept Mrs Gurrin’s evidence, which was uncontested, in its entirety. Mr Hatchwell’s evidence of fact is equally accepted. His evidence about whether the Prayer Room would be acceptable to members of other faiths is opinion evidence which we disregard.

Mr Wilcox explained that the essence of the appellant VO’s case is that the use of the Hall and the Prayer Room goes beyond the concept of ancillary in paragraph 11(2)(b). Both rooms are used for the private religious activities of the occupier, which are not subordinate, incidental or supplemental to the use of the Property as offices.

Mr Wilcox argued that a use that is ancillary to office use must be “generic”, in other words something that might be found in use in any office rather than being specific to a particular employer or an employer with a particular mission. That is the case for “office use” itself; in paragraph 101 of the Scientology decision the Tribunal considered whether auditing rooms were offices and decided that they were not, because what happened there was not normal office use. The same, said Mr Wilcox, must be the case for use ancillary to office use. Nothing in the statutory language suggests that concepts should be modified to reflect the religious character of the occupier of the hereditament.

The VO’s case is that neither the Hall nor the Prayer Room are used for the sort of generic ancillary use that is within the contemplation of the statute. The use of each is attributable not to office use but to the respondent’s mission.

Moreover, the Tribunal should look at the primary purpose of the room. In his skeleton argument, without the benefit of Mrs Gurrin’s evidence about the frequency of the use of the Hall for different activities (paragraph 13 above), Mr Wilcox asserted that the primary use of the Hall was for private religious services with only occasional use for office meetings. In response to Mrs Gurrin’s oral evidence, which demonstrated that the use of the Hall for the purposes described in her paragraph 4 was not occasional, Mr Wilcox argued that the length of time for which a room is occupied for a particular purpose is not the determining factor; the use of the Hall is primarily religious, not least because of its size which is not that of a normal meeting room. The prayer meetings were regular, the office use was not.

As to the Prayer Room, Mr Wilcox argued that this is a space designed and used for the respondent’s specific religious purposes. Even if (which is not known) the type of multi-faith space described in the article referenced by Mr Hatchwell was prevalent in 2017, this is not such a space because it is not neutral.

Mr Wilcox argued that it is important not to interpret the exemption in paragraph 11(2)(b) in such a way as to create by a side-wind an exemption for spaces used for private religious worship. Parliament has specifically decided that such spaces are not exempt.

For the respondent Mr Ormondroyd disagreed with Mr Wilcox on three legal points.

First, he argued that the Tribunal should employ a “reasonably liberal” construction of the exemption in paragraph 11(2)(b), as the VTE said it had done. He relied on the breadth of the drafting (spaces “used as an office”, or “for office purposes”, or for purposes ancillary to either use, are all exempt), and on the approach articulated in W & JB Eastwood Limited v Herrod (VO) [1971] AC 160.

In Eastwood the question was whether certain buildings were exempt from non-domestic rates on the basis that they were “used in connection with” agricultural land. They were used to house chickens which spent almost all their lives there, and occupied together with adjoining agricultural land used to produce feed and to provide a small area for the cockerels to run on. Lord Reid said this at page 168D:

“The key words are “used in connection with” agricultural operations on the land. Ordinary usage of the English language suggests that the buildings must be subsidiary or ancillary to the agricultural operations. Logically it may be that if A is connected with B, then B must be connected with A. But language is not always logical…

I do not foresee unreasonable difficulty if “used in connection with” is held to mean use consequential on or ancillary to the agricultural operations on the land which is occupied together with the building. No doubt this must be interpreted in a reasonably liberal manner.”

Consistently with that, Mr Ormondroyd argued, paragraph 11(2)(b) should be interpreted in a reasonably liberal manner. That would also be consistent with the history of the legislation, which has shown a progressive widening of the religious exemption, in order to benefit religious bodies (as the Tribunal accepted at paragraph 117 of Scientology). Parliament has legislated generously and with an open hand and the legislation should be interpreted in the same way.

Mr Ormondroyd acknowledged that the wording in question here is “ancillary to”, not “in connection with”, but argued that the latter expression could not naturally have been used in the context of two parts of the same building.

Second, Mr Ormondroyd disagreed with Mr Wilcox’s insistence that ancillary use must nevertheless be generic ancillary office use. The point in issue in Scientology was the nature of office use, and the fact that that has to be generic does not mean that ancillary use must be too. Essentially his point was that that is not what the statute says; there is no need to show that many, or any, offices have facilities like those in question here, nor to imagine a generic office occupier and consider what ancillary uses such an occupier would typically make of the space available. The only question is whether the respondent uses these two rooms for purposes ancillary to its office use of the rest of the building; in other words, the Tribunal is to look at whether the use is ancillary, not at what kind of use it is.

In the present case the Prayer Room is not an unusual form of provision in office buildings, but in any event the use was ancillary to the office use simply because it was provided for the well-being of the staff. That it had a Christian flavour was hardly surprising in the respondent’s case; any suggestion that it would be best practice to have a more neutral space is simply a suggestion about best practice and does not go to whether or not the use is ancillary. The same is argued for the use of the Hall for prayer meetings – although in any event the respondent’s case is that the use of the Hall was primarily office use. The fact that the Hall is large is nothing to the point; there is no authority to support the idea that size matters. In any event the size of the Hall was proportionate in light of the size of the Property, and not unusual when compared with spaces for lectures, or for whole-company events, in other large office buildings.

Third, Mr Ormondroyd took issue with the idea that if a space is used for private worship that must disqualify it from exemption, since only spaces used for public worship can be exempt. He argued that that would be a perverse approach since the exemption exists to benefit religious organisations. The simple question in the statute is whether the use is ancillary to the office use of the rest of the hereditament; there is no warrant for introducing an enquiry about the nature of the use or about theological issues such as the effect of the presence of a cross in the room.

Mr Wilcox disagreed on all three points. As to the “liberal approach” he argued that the wording and the context in Eastwood were quite different, and that while the words “in connection with” could have been used in paragraph 11(2)(b) they were not.

We agree with Mr Wilcox that there is no basis on which we should take a different approach to the construction of paragraph 11(2)(b) than to any other statutory provision, and certainly not a “liberal” approach. First, Eastwood was a decision about different words (which could have been used in paragraph 11(2)(b) but were not) and in a very different context. Second, even in their own context those words should not be taken too far; it is worth noting that despite the use of the words “reasonably liberal approach” the decision in Eastwood was adverse to the ratepayer. Lord Reid went on to discuss cases where his “liberal approach” would be important, but it did not help the ratepayer in that instance.

It is undoubtedly true the religious exemption from non-domestic rating has been extended by Parliament over the years; but that does not imply that the legislative provisions should be construed in a way different from the construction of any other statute. The Tribunal’s decision in Scientology does not support the respondent’s case on this point; all it decided there was that there was no scope for a restrictive approach to the concept of “office use” (the third of the four points decided, summarised in paragraph 5 above).

However, that point was not essential to the respondent’s case. On the other two legal issues we agree with Mr Ormondroyd.

“Ancillary” is not a difficult word. The word “ancilla” is Latin for a handmaid; as Mr Wilcox says, ancillary use is something subordinate, supplemental or incidental to office use. The Property itself provides uncontroversial examples - toilets, the kitchen, the servery, for example. Toilets are an essential facility; a kitchen and servery are not, yet they are still ancillary. Many offices have them and many do not. We do not think that “ancillary use” has to be a generic or typical ancillary use. Paragraph 11(3) sets out examples of office use, but no examples are given of uses ancillary to office use even though such examples could easily have been given. It is not a closed or generic category; what unites the many possibilities is their being ancillary.

That means that the exemption of a place where private prayer or worship is carried on, where that use is ancillary to office use, does not risk introducing an exemption for private religious worship by a side-wind.

Turning to the rooms in question, we can deal quite simply with the Hall. From the photographs it did look just like an informal-style church set out for worship, and certainly it was so used for an hour a week and for Christmas Carol Services. But Mrs Gurrin’s unchallenged evidence is not only that it was used for a variety of activities that are obviously ancillary to office use (her witness statement), but also that it was so used for a lot of the time and a lot more than it was used for prayer or worship (discussion at the hearing strayed briefly into whether prayer is a form of worship, and rapidly veered away; we steer well clear). Therefore as a matter of fact the Hall was primarily used for purposes that are in themselves agreed to be ancillary to office use in a generic sense. The use of such a large room for those purposes is, in our judgment and on these facts, immaterial; this was a large building, and there could well have been training events which a sizeable proportion of staff had to attend – although the Hall, seating about 170, would not have contained all or even most of the 500 staff members. The additional use of the Hall for prayer and for carol services does not change the nature of its primary use; and the fact that that additional use amounts to private religious worship does not disqualify the Hall from exemption. It is exempt.

Whether the Prayer Room is a neutral or multi-faith space is, in our judgment, a distraction. There is no expert evidence as to whether the room would be acceptable for people of faiths other than Christianity, but we have Mrs Gurrin’s unchallenged evidence that it was. But that is immaterial in any event; the legal question is simply whether it was ancillary to the use of the Property as an office. The evidence is that it was provided for the well-being of the staff, and used by members of staff; we find that it was no less ancillary to office use than the kitchen. We have rejected the argument that space provided for private worship cannot, for that reason, be within paragraph 11(2)(b). Therefore, the Prayer Room is also exempt.

Accordingly, in light of the parties’ agreed valuations, the rateable value of the Property is £1. The appeal is dismissed.

This decision is final on all matters except costs, and the Tribunal will provide directions for the exchange of submissions on costs in the unlikely event that liability cannot be agreed.