Stokes v City Council of Cambridge

Cambridge land compulsorily acquired for relocation of industry – Comparables – Cost of obtaining access to subject land The following decision was given by Mr JR Laird FRICS, and Mr John Watson FRICS (Members of the Lands Tribunal) on November 30 in Stokes (Claimant) and the City Council of Cambridge (Compensating Authority): This is a reference by the claimant of the amount of compensation payable upon the compulsory acquisition of some 12.6 acres of freehold land forming part of Trinity Hall Farm, Milton Road, in the City of Cambridge. The land in question is to the south-east of Milton Road, but has no road frontage; the intervening land is also owned by the claimant, who has an industrial planning permission in regard to it. To the south-west of the subject land is a housing estate owned by the Corporation of the City of Cambridge; for convenience we shall call this the yellow land. To the south-east of the yellow land and south of the subject land are allotments, likewise owned by the Corporation; we shall call this land the purple land. To the north-east of the purple land, and immediately to the south-east of the subject land, is yet another area owned by the Corporation which we shall call the green land: the green land is allocated to allotments but is not yet occupied for this purpose. The northern boundary of the subject land is the railway. The Question of Access An important issue is access. If and when the subject land is developed for industrial purposes, the planning authority, by direction of the Ministry of Transport, will forbid access from Milton Road, which is a trunk road, through the frontage land owned by the claimant. The only way of getting to the subject land will then be across the yellow or purple land to the south of it. An existing track between the yellow and the purple lands, if the owner of the subject land could acquire it, could be made into a road giving him access from Green End Road. The track is some 940 ft long and has an area of 0.7 acre; we shall call this the brown strip. The Development Plan for Cambridge was approved by the Minister of Housing and Local Government on September 9 1954. One of its basic proposals is that Cambridge should remain predominantly a university city; to this end it is proposed, inter alia, to limit industrial expansion in and near it. "It is intended," we read in the Written Statement, "that new industries employing a large number of workers shall not be established in the City, and only a moderate and reasonable expansion of existing industry will be approved." The subject land is part of an area designated for compulsory acquisition for industrial development. In the compulsory purchase order, confirmed by the Minister on November 24, 1959, the purpose is more fully stated as being to make the land available to owners of factories and other industries "which, in pursuance of the Development Plan, will have to be removed from their existing sites in the city. This will entail keeping in hand a considerable portion of the land for a number of years until the provisions of the Development Plan come to be implemented." The Written Statement does not mention access, but the Town Clerk, in a letter to the claimant’s solicitors dated June 2, 1958, touched on this point. "The land," he wrote, "to the south-east of the appeal site (ie the green land) is, at the present time, zoned for statutory allotments. Should it prove necessary for it to be rezoned for industrial purposes the City Council would no doubt provide a proper access from Green End Road." Such an access would also provide access to the subject land. Notice to treat was served on March 25, 1960, and compensation has to be assessed in the light of the planning assumptions postulated by the Town and Country Planning Act, 1959. These are contained in section 4 of the Act, subsections (2), (6) and (7). Under subsection (2) there is no dispute between the parties that planning permission must be assumed for industrial development. Under subsection (6) it is agreed that the conditions reasonably to be expected include a condition that satisfactory access to the subject land and estate roads within the land should be provided; that planning permission would be given only to firms who fulfil the basic requirements of the Development Plan; beside the usual conditions about light, design, drainage and services. Evidence for the Claimant Mr Douglas Lionel January, FALPA, senior partner in Messrs Douglas L January & Partners, estate agents, of Cambridge, was the first of two valuers called for the claimant. He was supported by Mr Percy Charles Gray, MA, FRICS, FAI; Mr Gray is senior partner in the firm of Gray, Swann & Cook, also of Cambridge. Mr January tendered the following valuation: 12.6 acres at £10,000 per acre £126,000 Defer for 2 years at 6 per cent = 126,000 x 0.8899964 = £112,139 say £112,000 Less: (a) Estimated cost of roads, sewers, fencing consents and contingencies, as agreed with City Surveyor – less half-cost of constructing access road from Green End Road to a point where it enters the land to be acquired, referred to on Plan DJ1, as R4 and R3 £24,200 Less 3,373 £20,827 Engineers’ and quantity surveyors’ fees at 10 per cent 2,083 £22,910 Defer 1.5 years at 6 per cent 0.91 £20,848 say £20,850 £91,150 (b) Cost of acquiring access road (it being assumed for the purpose of this valuation that a fair and equitable approach to this aspect of the matter would be to assess the value of the land required for the proposed access road, and apportion the figure between Stokes, the claimant, and Cambridge Corporation as owners of the land edged green on Plan M66 which accompanied our letter to the District Valuer of March 10, 1961.) Whereas the valuation dated January 19, 1961, was made on the premise that the land so required was designated under the Development Plan as "area primarily for residential use" it now transpires that only  0.1 acre is so designated, the remaining 0.6 acre being designated as "statutory allotments." The valuation therefore falls to be further adjusted as follows: Less 0.1 acre at £5,000 per acre   £500 0.6  acre  at  £200  per acre    120 £620 – Half-cost 310 £90,840 £10,000 an Acre Mr January’s starting price is £10,000 per acre. That is his estimate of the retail price of the subject land, if sold in plots, with direct access from new estate roads to be made by the vendor and with all services available. Mr January supported this figure by evidence of a number of property transactions in Cambridge between the spring of 1957 and the summer of 1961. Most of them were sales in Newmarket Road at prices ranging from about £10,000 to £40,000 per acre. There was also a sale of land and buildings in Broad Street in July 1960, at a price equivalent to £15,675 per acre. A site of 0.8 of an acre on the west side of Milton Road, south of the railway and opposite to the claimant’s frontage land, was the subject of an offer and acceptance, in 1961, at a price equivalent to £13,700 per acre. Another site of half-an-acre on the east side of the Cambridge Road in the village of Milton, three miles from the centre of the city and outside the city boundary, was sold in 1961 at a price equivalent to £10,000 per acre: the Cambridge Road is a continuation of Milton Road to the north. We will call the last the red land. Mr January explained his deferment for two years by reference to the Programme Map. The period envisaged for substantially completing the industrial development of the subject land is five years from the date of the Plan, which was confirmed by the Minister on September 9, 1954. Mr January said it was reasonable to assume that the subject land could have been fully developed by March, 1964, which is four years from the date of the notice to treat. He had therefore taken a mean figure. The basic costs of constructing roads, sewers, fencing, and the amounts to be allowed for contingencies and fees, have been agreed, subject to a minor difference about apportionment. The cost of acquiring the brown strip is a major issue, and Mr January’s assumptions in regard to it are stated in his valuation. It will be seen that he values 0.1 of an acre, which is zoned for residential use, at the rate of £5,000 per acre; he values the remaining 0.6 of an acre, which is zoned for allotments at £200 per acre. District Valuer’s Evidence Mr Scrivens, counsel for the Corporation, called Mr Arthur Reginald Barton, FRICS, District Valuer for Cambridge. On the strength of Mr Barton’s evidence, which we will come to in a moment, Mr Scrivens attacks Mr January’s valuation mainly on the following grounds. It is wrong, he says, to assume a retail sale of 12.6 acres, when one acre would be required for estate roads. A deferment factor of two years is too short. He says it is unrealistic to assume that the owner of the brown strip, who by providing access can put a substantial profit in the pocket of the owner of the subject land, would sell land for this purpose at no more than its market price for housing or agriculture. Finally, he claims that the valuation is faulty because it makes no allowance for developer’s profit. Here is Mr Barton’s valuation of the subject land; to simplify comparison we reproduce it in the same form as Mr January’s valuation: 11.6 acres at £6,000 per acre Defer 4 years at 6 per cent Value of deferred realisation YP £69,600 0.79 £54,984 Less: Developer’s profit, etc, at 15 per cent For 11.6 acres But say at £4,000 per acre 8,247 £46,737 £46,400 Deduct: (a) Estimated cost of roads, sewers, fencing, consents and contingencies: Construction Engineer’s and quantity surveyor’s fees at 10 per cent Defer 1.5 years at 6 per cent Value of land with necessary access for industrial development (b) Estimated cost of purchasing access for industrial development: (i) Value of land with necessary access £24,200 2,420 £26,620 0.91 £22,176 £22,176 £24,224 Less: (ii) Value as accommodation land 12.6 acres at £200 per acre Increase in value due to access Allocate one-half for purchase 2,520 £19,656 say £9,828 £12,348 £12,500 It will be observed that Mr Barton assumes a smaller area available for sale retail, namely 11.6 acres. His starting price, comparable with Mr January’s £10,000 per acre, is £6,000 per acre. He defended this by evidence of three sales of land in Coldham Lane, Cambridge, in 1959 and 1960. The validity of these prices, as a guide to the value of the subject land, is keenly contested by the claimant: we shall return to it later. The other major difference between Mr Barton and Mr January is in the price a developer of the subject land would have had to pay the owner of the brown strip for the right of access. Mr Barton says that in circumstances like these the owner might be expected to demand half of the development value: by development value we mean the increase in value of the land created by the access. He says, further, that the owner of the yellow, purple and green land would have contributed nothing to the cost of making the road. The Issues The issues we have to determine are accordingly these. First, what was the retail value on March 25, 1960, of the subject land per acre for industrial development; was it £10,000, as suggested by Mr January and Mr Gray, or £6,000 as estimated by Mr Barton? Second, what area should be so valued? Third, should the retail value of the land be deferred for two years or four? Fourth, what would a purchaser at the material date have allowed for the cost of acquiring access? Fifth, who would have paid for making the access road? We have viewed the subject land and most of the sites which the valuers on both sides referred to as comparisons. Having done so, we are satisfied that the claimant’s figure of £10,000 per acre is not supported by evidence: still less is it supported if an allowance is made for developer’s profit, which in our opinion would be academically correct. The sales in Newmarket Road are of little help: all these sites are more centrally situated than the subject land, and we are left in no doubt that Newmarket Road has a publicity value, whether or not the actual purchasers wanted it. A combination of these factors has created in Newmarket Road a higher level of value than that of the subject land, which has no road frontage and is further from the centre of the city. The sale of the red land is of considerable assistance and we shall return to it later, but it does not support Mr January’s figure of £10,000 per acre for the subject land. The site in Milton Road opposite to the claimant’s other land had not been sold at the time of the hearing; it was merely the subject of an offer and acceptance dependent upon contract, and for this reason we disregard it. The District Valuer’s estimate of £6,000 per acre is supported, according to his evidence, by the sales of land in Coldham Lane; and the claimant’s valuers agree that the subject land and the Coldham Lane land, although in different parts of the City, are in many respects similar. They concede that but for a restriction created by an undertaking given at a planning inquiry, which we shall discuss presently, the two pieces of land might have been expected to sell in the open market at the same basic price. To the question "If it was not for the restriction the two pieces of land would have been the same?" Mr Gray answered "Yes." It is important to note that the Coldham Lane land lies between Coldham Lane and a road called Church End; it has frontages to both. Thus it would be possible to develop it in one-acre plots without the cost of making estate roads. This being so, it appears to us that the prices obtained per acre in Coldham Lane are to be compared with the District Valuer’s £6,000 per acre for the subject land. The claimant contends that the prices actually obtained in Coldham Lane are misleading because of special circumstances which attended the sales. This contention was supported by evidence from Mr Gray which occupied a large part of the five-day hearing: it is necessary that we should now deal with it at some length. The land with frontage to Coldham Lane was divided for the purpose of sale into four plots. Plots A and C each had an area of four acres; Plot B of three acres; Plot D of about one-and-a-half acres. The whole of the land was zoned for industry and designated in the Development Plan for compulsory purchase; it was programmed for development during the first five years beginning in 1954. When, in 1956, the Corporation promoted a compulsory purchase order, the owner objected. This led to a public inquiry on March 20 of that year, at which the Corporation said that they needed the land for the relocation of industry to be removed from other parts of the town, for suitable applicants whom they had and approved of, and for others whom they might approve. The owner replied that he could sell the land for these purposes as effectively as the Corporation. On May 6, 1956, the owner died. On June 19, the Minister refused to confirm the compulsory purchase order. He recorded that the owner had been "prepared to give an undertaking to sell the land only to firms approved by the Council"; further that he, the Minister, had "noted particularly the owner’s willingness to allow the land to be developed for industrial purposes – the purposes for which it was allocated in the approved Development Plan." These purposes are defined on page 4 of the Written Statement as follows: "Land has been allocated on the Town Map for the relocation of existing factories which are badly sited, or require room for expansion, and for the introduction of new industry including workshops and storage yards." Thereafter the Corporation proposed that the executors of the late owner should enter into an agreement to implement the undertaking; but it soon emerged that they interpreted the undertaking differently. The executors claimed they were only under an obligation to offer the land for sale to the Corporation’s nominees in the first instance: if there were no nominees, or if the nominees failed to buy, they were free to sell to anyone who had planning permission. The Corporation took the view that the undertaking gave them a veto: no sale might be effected save to a firm approved by them, and they said they would only approve firms which had to be relocated because of planning disturbance. They conceded this might mean a portion of the land remaining vacant for a long time; but, they said, the relocation of existing industries in Cambridge was likely to be a slow business, and this was how they themselves, had they been permitted to acquire the land, would have developed it. The executors were doubtless relieved when the Minister removed the threat of compulsory purchase in June, 1956. That date was well before the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1959, and a valuation of the land for estate duty at £10,500 had suggested to them that this was the most they could expect to obtain from the Corporation. They now decided to try to sell the land privately, and their first step, in compliance with the undertaking, was to ask the Corporation for the names of firms they would approve as purchasers. The Corporation, who at the inquiry in 1956 had said they had "a large number of applicants for industrial sites," supplied the names of only two firms – Messrs Johnson & Bailey and Simplex Dairy Equipment Company; each required four acres. The executors’ next step, with a view to selling to one or both of these firms, was to submit a projected layout of the land to the county council, in its capacity as town planning authority; that was on November 14, 1956. This lay-out was in fact a copy of one which had been prepared earlier by the Corporation’s surveyor. "A Veiled Threat" On January 9, 1957, there was an interview between the County Planning Officer and the executors’ surveyor, Mr Gray, at which, according to Mr Gray, the Planning Officer gave him to understand that in certain circumstances the industrial zoning of the land might be cancelled; Mr Gray took this as a "veiled threat." On February 4, the matter apparently being no further advanced, Mr Gray wrote to the County Planning Officer on behalf of the executors to inquire what was happening. This letter was not acknowledged. He wrote again on March 5, and on this occasion received a non-committal reply from the Planning Officer which said, amongst other things, "in one of the cases affecting the Coldham Lane site, we are negotiating for the movement of the industry out of Cambridge altogether." As Mr Gray had reason to think that this was one of the two firms nominated by the Corporation, to whom he had been trying to sell four acres, the information was cold comfort. However, he continued to press the County Planning Officer to approve the lay-out. There was a further meeting on August 30, when the Planning Officer again referred to the possibility of the land being dezoned for industry. On September 11, 1957, the County Planning Committee considered the application. It was not until October 8, 1957, more than 10 months after Mr Gray had submitted the application, that he obtained any clear indication of the County Council’s attitude. The Planning Officer wrote to say that his committee were not prepared to approve the development of the estate as a whole, but would only entertain individual applications. To assist the owners, within the terms of the industrial policy, the Planning Committee gave him the names of five firms to whom they suggested he should offer the land. One of them was Messrs Johnson & Bailey, whom the Corporation had nominated and with whom Mr Gray was already in negotiation. Another was the Postmaster-General, who had been negotiating for some time the purchase of Plot D, where he was already a tenant. The remaining three firms mentioned in the Planning Officer’s letter were hitherto unknown to Mr Gray; they included a firm called WJ Adkins. Simplex, the second nominee of the Corporation, was not mentioned. Two Offers Mr Gray concluded that Simplex was in process of being rehoused elsewhere; so in its place he chose WJ Adkins and opened negotiations. In January, 1958, he was successful in obtaining two offers subject to contract which he accepted: from Messrs Johnson & Bailey £10,000 for the purchase of the four acres comprising Plot A; and the same price from Messrs WJ Adkins for the four acres comprising Plot C. He continued his negotiations with the Postmaster-General. But sales to WJ Adkins and the Post Office, notwithstanding they had been suggested by the County Council, had still to have the approval of the Corporation. There ensued a correspondence between Mr Gray and the Town Clerk, at the end of which the Corporation approved the Post Office but declined to approve WJ Adkins. So WJ Adkins were turned down. In September, 1959, the sale to Messrs Johnson & Bailey, negotiated 21 months before, was completed; the negotiations for the sale of Plot D, a relatively small area with some buildings on it, went on. In the autumn of 1959 the owners were left with Plot C and Plot D on their hands and no approved applicants. In the meantime the solicitors for the executors had been corresponding with the Town Clerk about the proposed agreement. They submitted a first draft on April 4, 1957, and had no more news of it until October 8, when the County Planning Officer wrote to say it had been passed to him. In November, 1957, they began sending reminders to the Town Clerk, but letters dated November 29, 1957, December 19, 1957 and January 8, 1958 were not acknowledged. A further letter to the Town Clerk, dated January 18, 1958, brought a reply containing a number of proposed amendments to the draft agreement they had submitted some nine months before. They refused to accept them. The correspondence dragged on until both parties wrote to the Minister in the hope of ending a deadlock; they exchanged copies of what they had written. The Town Clerk’s letter to the Minister, dated August 26, 1959, contained an inquiry "whether the Minister would be willing to accept a further application for the confirmation of a compulsory purchase order." This, said Mr Gray, "frightened the owner to death." The Minister replied in similar terms to both parties, he regretted that, because of his appellate capacity, it would be improper for him to express any opinion at all. In the long run no agreement was signed; the owner instead, on July 14, 1959, served unilaterally on the Corporation an undertaking which appears to have left them as dissatisfied as ever. Three Acres Sold for £11,500 On October 21, 1959, the executors’ solicitors wrote to their surveyor, Mr Gray. They suggested that in all the circumstances their clients’ best course would be to try and sell the rest of the land – Plots B and C – to the Corporation at the same price per acre as they had sold Plot A to Messrs Johnson & Bailey. But by this time the Town and Country Planning Act, 1959 had been passed; at some date in October or November, 1959, before an approach had been made to the Corporation, Mr Gray succeeded in selling the three acres comprising Plot B to Messrs Winton-Smith for £11,500. The Corporation do not appear to have given formal approval to Winton-Smith; but they were aware of the transaction and did not disapprove. Thereafter, the four acres comprising Plot C were sold to the Corporation at a price equivalent to £4,000 per acre. These are the facts upon which Mr Bain invited us to conclude that the sales of this land in Coldham Lane were at prices below the open-market value. The undertaking given at the public inquiry; the construction placed upon it by the Corporation; the inconsistency between the Corporation and the County Council in the matter of nominating purchasers; the unexplained delays; the "veiled threats" of dezoning; the dilatory way in which both these authorities conducted their correspondence; a combination of these things, he said, was frustrating to the owner and his advisers and implanted in their minds a strong suspicion that they were being deliberately obstructed by one or other of the authorities – or by both. Having regard to the criticisms of the procedure of the County Council, in their capacity as town planning authority, we think it regrettable, but perhaps significant, that no evidence was called to explain it. The sales of the land in Coldham Lane are vital to the Corporation’s case; therefore, we have to decide whether this sequence of events was likely to create such a suspicion, well-founded or not, in the minds of reasonable people – which we conceive the executors and their advisers to have been. We are satisfied that it was. We think there is every probability that they were induced to sell some, if not all, of their land in Coldham Lane at such prices as they could get in a market which appeared to them unreasonably and unwarrantably restricted. On the face of it, after the passing of the 1959 Act, the executors had nothing to fear from a new compulsory order. We think, however, that by this time their patience was exhausted: their attitude was, in Mr Gray’s words "Let us get rid of the whole unpleasant affair and let us offer the whole of the rest at a rate pro rata." "Coldham Lane Prices Unreliable" It is important to note that even if the price of £4,000 per acre in Coldham Lane was unduly low, because of the restriction on that land deriving from the undertaking and the other matters we have mentioned, there is still a margin of £2,000 per acre between this price and the price of £6,000 at which the District Valuer has assessed the subject land. He described the transactions in Coldham Lane as his sheet anchor. Why then, we ask ourselves, has he valued the subject land at so much more than the highest price this allegedly comparable land was sold at? If, as would appear, he thought there should be a margin, why such a substantial margin and how was it calculated? Was the margin substantial enough? The evidence provided no answers to these questions and we ourselves are unable to answer them. Taking all these circumstances into account, we have come to the conclusion that the prices obtained for the land in Coldham Lane are unreliable as a guide to the value of the land we are concerned with, and we shall pay no regard to them. An "Untainted" Sale In our opinion the best guide is the price paid for the red land, where the sale was untainted. Mr January said it was his most useful comparison; Mr Gray said it was the second-best comparison; the District Valuer conceded that it was the best comparison after Coldham Lane. The red land has an area of half-an-acre and is on the east side of the Cambridge Road, a little more  than half-a-mile north of the subject land. It has 100 ft of main-road frontage and some publicity value because of it; but the only permitted access is from the rear, over a road to be made by the vendor, and it is near the Corporation sewage works and further from the centre of the city than the subject land. Upon the evidence, and in the light of our inspections, we are satisfied, taking all these considerations into account, that the two sites are comparable. In March, 1961, an offer was made and accepted of £5,000 for this half-acre of red land, subject to a town planning consent for a use limited to the storage of industrial plant. The consent has since been obtained and the purchase completed. A Letting of Backland We also gain assistance from a letting of some backland in Newmarket Road, for 21 years from Christmas, 1960, at a rent of £650 a year. The landlords were the Corporation; Mr Gray considers this his most useful comparison. The area was a little under one acre, and the District Valuer concedes that the rent fixed was equivalent to a sale of the freehold at the same date for a price equivalent to £10,000 per acre. Allowance must be made for rising land values between the date of service of the notice to treat and the dates of these transactions. Upon the evidence generally, but mainly in the light of these comparisons, we have come to the conclusion that Mr Barton’s estimate of £6,000 an acre as the retail value of the subject land is low: it may be significant that he made his valuation before the red land was sold. For the £6,000 in his computation we shall substitute £7,000. Obviously, the land to be sold at this price is that which remains after the roads are constructed; Mr Barton’s area of 11.6 acres is accordingly correct. Deferment Should the deferment of the retail value be for two years or four, as the mean of four years or eight years, or for some other period? We think it depends less upon the indications in the Programme Map than upon the realities of the position in March, 1960. More than five years had passed since the confirmation of the plan, which had allocated certain lands for industrial purposes; they included the subject land of 12.5 acres and the 11 acres in Coldham Lane. Of the latter, some seven acres had been sold to Messrs Johnson & Bailey and to Winton-Smith. Mr Barton, in answer to Mr Scrivens’ question, "Why do you envisage eight years as against Mr January’s four years?" said: "This is a matter on which one obviously cannot be too dogmatic. I have thought a good deal about it, and in the very early stages I inquired through the City Surveyor’s Department what might be the prospective time for filling up this land if it were used entirely for relocation of displaced firms. On the rate of the programme then to be seen, it appeared that if it were restricted to such sort of development – the firms at present being displaced, quite largely comprising smaller areas – it might well be 15 years to take up this whole 12 acres or thereabouts. But in view of the fact that we  must take into account not only the displaced firms who have to be relocated, but any new industries or expanding industries which can get through the rather fine sieve of the Cambridge planning policy, and also in view of the fact that this is not quite the only land that will be available – if not at present, then in course of time will be available – I thought it fair and reasonable to have this figure of 15 years and call it eight years. Hence my adoption of four years for deferment" But why, we ask ourselves, if Mr Barton defers for four years, based on his estimate of eight years to complete the development, does he defer the cost of making estate roads, of sewers, fencing and so on, only one-and-a-half years? Would any developer spend £24,224 in three years in anticipation of a development which would take as long as eight years to complete? We think not. In all the circumstances we have come to the conclusion that Mr January’s period of two years is too short, and Mr Barton’s four years too long. We find that the correct period of deferment is three years. Cost of Obtaining Access Now we come to the vexed question of access. We dismiss at once, as unrealistic, Mr January’s suggestion that the owner of the brown strip would be willing to sell it to a prospective developer of the backland at no more than its bare price for housing or agriculture. Manifestly, the owner of the front land, aware that he held the only key to the development of the backland, would expect to receive a substantial share of the profit which, if he withheld the key, would be unobtainable. A major issue is what factors the Tribunal is entitled to take into account. According to Mr Bain, for the claimant, we are entitled to take into account the special circumstances that the Corporation are the owners of the land across which the access is required; of the purple land to the south of it which they use for allotments; of the green land north-east of the purple land, which is not yet occupied as allotments but is allocated to that purpose. Mr Bain says a prospective purchaser would know of these ownerships. His inquiries would reveal that the Corporation were eager for the industrial development of the subject land in accordance with their plan. He would expect the Corporation to co-operate in providing access to the land which they were anxious to see developed. Then there was the future of the green and purple land. Mr Bain suggests, because of its position, there is every chance that sooner or later the green land will be rezoned for development by the Corporation themselves as their own industrial estate, after they have developed the subject land. He says a prospective purchaser would have had that possibility in mind, and would have realised that a road through the brown strip would give access to the Corporation land as well as to his own. For all these reasons, says Mr Bain, he would have expected to buy his access reasonably. "Corporation’s Ownership Irrelevant" Mr Scrivens, for the acquiring authority, submits that the fact the Corporation own the brown strip is irrelevant and should be ignored. It would be wrong in law, he says, for the Tribunal to take into account any possibility of rezoning; the existing zoning of the green and purple land for allotments is all we are concerned with. We should also be wrong, he warns us, if we were to take into account any predilections the Corporation may have towards the industrial development of the subject land, or any other land in their capacity, as delegates of the town planning authority. The value we have to determine is that of the subject land in the open market at the date of service of the notice to treat, subject to the statutory considerations. That value largely depends upon the price a prospective purchaser at that date would have expected to pay for access. There are thus two hypothetical transactions, one depending upon the other. The primary transaction is the purchase of the subject land itself; the secondary transaction, without which the primary transaction cannot fructify, is the purchase of the brown land. It is implicit in the rules under the 1919 Act that in relation to the primary transaction the identity, resources or motives of any particular vendor or purchaser must be ignored; the value to be determined is the value in the market. But there is no market for this access, except to a prospective developer of the subject land. We hold we should be wrong in law to pay any regard to the fact that the Corporation, who are at once the acquiring authority and the town planning authority, own the brown strip. Apart from that, we consider we are entitled – indeed  we are required – to view the actualities through the eyes of a prospective purchaser of the subject land at the material date: to note that the owner of the brown strip is also the owner of the green and purple land; that planning is fluid and open to review from time to time; that at some future date the green and purple land, now allocated to allotments, may be rezoned for industry – as has already happened elsewhere in Cambridge; that the likelihood of such rezoning will be increased if the subject land is developed for industry first; that accordingly there is an inducement to the owner of the brown strip to sell it as access in order to expedite, in his own interests, this sequence of events. In the light of these considerations we think a prospective purchaser of the subject land would be more optimistic about the price he would be obliged to pay for access than is the District Valuer. The exact proportion of the eventual profit he would expect to pay away is a matter for conjecture, but in all the circumstances we think a half is too much; we shall substitute one-third, on the basis that the Corporation would not contribute to the cost of road-making. The Award Our award is £23,615, which we arrive at as follows: 11.6 acres at £76,000 per acre Defer 3 years at 6 per cent        Value of deferred realisation £81,200 0.84 £68,208 Less Developer’s profit, etc, 15 per cent of £68,208 £10,231 £57,977 Deduct: Estimated cost of roads, sewers, fencing, consents and contingencies £24,224 Value of land with necessary access for industrial development £33,753 Deduct estimated cost of purchasing access for industrial development: Value of land with necessary access £33,753 Less: Value as accommodation land. 12.6 acres at £200 2,520 Increase in value due to access Allocate one-third to purchase of access £31,233 £10,411 £23,342 Add Claimant’s surveyor’s fees in accordance with Scale 5A of the scale of charges of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors 273 Total compensation £23,615 Mr Bain asked for interest upon the amount of the award under Rule 46 of the Lands Tribunal Rules. Mr Scrivens opposed the application. We think, however, that the application is justified, and we order that our award shall carry interest with effect from today, at such rate as may be prescribed by Treasury regulations from time to time. A sealed offer was opened after this decision was read, and the amount was less than the amount we have determined. In these circumstances the compensating authority will pay the claimant his costs, to be agreed, or, in default of agreement, taxed by the Registrar of the Lands Tribunal on the High Court Scale. Mr Donald C Bain QC and Mr RN Titheridge (instructed by Messrs Ellison & Co, of Cambridge) appeared for the claimant; Mr W Scrivens (instructed by the Town Clerk of Cambridge) for the compensating authority.