Scrap metal dealers have CPO compensation wiped out after failed appeals

A firm of Slough-based scrap metal dealers has had its compulsory purchase compensation wiped out after rejecting a settlement offer of around £400,000 and pursuing a series of appeals. Maxim and Nigel Bishop, the proprietors of Bishop’s Yard scrap dealers, had their case rejected in a ruling by a two-judge panel at the Court of Appeal in London. The issue that the Court of Appeal had to consider was whether the Bishops, who had their £4m claim reduced to £400,000, then £46,000, actually “won” their case because they were awarded money, albeit around 1% of what they initially claimed. They are doing this to challenge a costs order that is much higher than their compensation. The Bishop family had been dealing scrap from the yard for almost a century when Transport for London (TfL) acquired it in 2012 under a compulsory purchase order (CPO) to make way for the Crossrail project. The family claimed £4.2 million in compensation, arguing that would compensated them for lost business until their lease runs out in 2031. But in reply TfL argued that they weren’t entitled to any compensation for lost earnings as the heavily indebted firm hadn’t shown that the land would generate net income at all, “except at the expense of their creditors”. Even so, they offered to settle the case for £378,000 plus legal costs. The Bishops rejected the settlement and appealed it to a tribunal. Unfortunately for them, the tribunal decided, after a five-day hearing in July 2017, that the only compensation they were entitled to was £46,815 for clearing the site and ordered them to pay 80% of TfL’s costs. The tribunal found that the Bishops’ business was “both unprofitable and unsustainable”, according to the ruling. Recently, the “very substantial remuneration” that the Bishops had drawn from their “failed businesses” had been “at the expense of the creditors of those businesses”, and “no credible evidence” had been provided “to explain how any business conducted from the Yard could have continued to sustain those drawings”, the tribunal said, according to the ruling. The tribunal noted that the compensation was dwarfed by TfL’s costs, saying it would amount to only “a small down payment” towards what the Bishops owed TfL. The Bishops again appealed to the Court of Appeal. Their case was heard in January, when their lawyers argued that they had won a claim for compensation, so weren’t obliged to pay costs. But in a ruling made last week, and only just made available, a two-judge panel at the Court of Appeal again ruled against the Bishops, saying that the tribunal’s findings were properly made. “As the tribunal said when it refused permission to appeal to this court,” the judgment said, “the appellants had brought a very substantial claim, supported by elaborate evidence from two experts, but  had ‘failed entirely’ on ‘the substance’ of that claim – a summary that seems perfectly apt. “The appellants had been awarded only a ‘very modest sum’ in compensation, on ‘a discrete issue’ that had taken ‘only a few minutes’ of the hearing and turned largely on their own evidence, unsupported by anything the expert witnesses had said – ‘in effect, a makeweight point’. “For the reasons I have given, I would dismiss this appeal.” (1) Maxim Alexander Bishop (2) Nigel Elston Bishop – and – Transport for London. Court of Appeal (Lindblom LJ, David Richards LJ), 5 April 2019. Mark Warwick QC (instructed by Gordon Dadds LLP) acted for the appellants (Bishop); Guy Williams (instructed by Town Legal LLP) acted for the respondent (TfL).