Rating Revaluations

This page summarises the effects of the revaluations in 1823, 1838 and 1851. Supporting details on some valuation issues are given on a separate page.

The principle of using rates as a form of local taxation to meet local expenditure on the relief of the poor went back to the sixteenth century. Rates had always been levied mainly on land and buildings; and rateable values (“RVs”) were intended to be based on rental values. For the immediate purpose of local taxation the method of converting rental values to RVs was unimportant, provided that the same method was fairly applied to all occupiers. To take as an example a terrace of three identical houses occupied by A, B and C: fairness required that they should each receive the same rate bill, even though A was paying the open market rent, B was paying less, because his landlord was an indulgent relative, and C was paying no rent, because he was an owner-occupier.

However, for the modern reader the usefulness of RVs for economic assessments depends on an understanding of the general relationship between them and the open market rents, which (in total, though not for each individual property) would be close to the rents actually paid by tenants. This relationship depended upon two factors: the rules that the valuers were trying to follow and the accuracy with which they applied those rules.

Although the reasons for changing the valuations of individual properties are scarcely ever known, it is sometimes possible to identify general features of the changes. That said, many properties cannot be compared, because in all three valuations some of the old values were omitted or obscured by giving a single value to several properties with the same occupier. Accuracy in determining the relative rises and falls in commercial and residential property is impossible, because of the large number of buildings in mixed commercial and residential use. For example, some of the properties listed as houses were really shops combined with living accommodation.

Revaluation leading to R1823

Before 1836 it was up to each parish to fix (typically at “the vestry”, a meeting of ratepayers) its own valuation rules. In Louth there is some evidence that in 1767 (see Poor Relief 1767) the rule was that RVs should generally be the same as open market rents, but this had broken down by the early nineteenth century. It appears that people occupying property of equal value were not necessarily receiving equal rate demands. The introductory note to R1823 stated that at a meeting on 20 August 1822 it was agreed that there was a need

for the equalization of the Parish Rates, which, as they then stood, it was unanimously admitted, were very unfair, and unequal among the Parishioners.

In the revaluation that produced R1823 it was decided (apparently informally – I have found no minute) that the RVs should be half of the open market rents. Most of the RVs were changed and the total valuation of the town increased by £1580, nearly 17%. Particularly large increases related to the 26 inns and public houses (41%), the buildings in the town centre (29%) and large houses generally (36%). Probably many of the old valuations were simply out of date and failed to reflect the growing prosperity of the town. It may also have been suspected that the richer inhabitants had exerted undue influence on earlier valuations. However for the lower half of Louth’s houses the trend was different: though the RVs of many individual houses were increased, the valuation of the group as a whole fell by over 7%. Objectively this reduction may have been wrong (see the 1838 view below). It may possibly have reflected a memory that many of the poorer occupiers had previously not been expected to pay: see the Poor Relief page referred to above. For more details of the changes see the tables in the appendix below.

On the issue of accuracy, the old saying “Valuation is not an exact science” should constantly be borne in mind. Even an experienced professional valuer with an excellent knowledge of the local market will sometimes fail to estimate accurately the letting value of properties. The valuers for the Louth rating lists were committees of businessmen, working unpaid; it would be unrealistic to expect more than broad accuracy in their figures.

Some ratepayers were dissatisfied with the revaluations and provision was made for appeals: see supplementary note 5.

Changes before 1838

Between 1823 and 1838 many new houses and other buildings were erected. The number of houses (including those with mixed residential and commercial use) increased by a third. Since a significant number of the 1823 houses must have been demolished or have fallen down, the number of new houses probably exceeded 500. Most of the new small houses were built off the main streets, in cul-de-sacs or yards. It is very difficult to quantify this, because R1823 and R1838 were inconsistent in the identification of yard houses. In the main streets relatively distant from the town centre, particularly Newmarket, Cisterngate and Ramsgate, the new houses tended to be slightly larger. The only important new street was Lee Street, which was partially developed by 1838. The building changes in the town centre were not extensive much. The largest houses in the town mostly dated from the eighteenth century but a very large house (later called “The Cedars”) had been built on what is now St Mary’s Lane. Valuations of the new houses were made on the same half rental basis as was used in 1823.

The 1838 Revaluation

The legal position was changed by the Parochial Assessments Act 1836, which introduced “…one uniform Mode of rating for the Relief of the Poor throughout England…” by requiring rates to be levied according to the rateable values, which were to be

the rent at which the [properties] might reasonably be expected to let from year to year, free of all the usual tenants [sic] rates and taxes, and tithe commutation rent-charge, if any, and deducting therefrom the probable annual cost of the repairs, insurance and other expenses, if any, necessary to maintain them in a state to command such rent.

R1823, with its half valuations, obviously did not meet this requirement and so a new valuation was necessary. The schedule to the 1836 Act set out examples of how the new law was intended to be applied. The following is a slightly abbreviated extract.

Two important issues are illustrated in the example given above: first the starting point was a gross estimated rental; the actual rent paid by James Smith might be different. Secondly the deduction for the landlord’s expenses was expected to vary according to the nature of the property: 8.3% for Whiteacre Farm but 16.6% for the house. (In theory the landlord’s expenses could be reduced to nil, if the lease required the tenant to pay all maintenance and insurance expenses; but in that case it would be assumed that the rent would be reduced to reflect the tenant’s increased obligations; so that the net effect would in theory be the same.)

In Louth the revaluation that produced R1838 should have been carried out under the new statutory rules, but the evidence shows otherwise. What seems to have happened was that there was a general reconsideration of values and the increases exceeded the reductions. The resulting RVs were intended to represent the estimated gross market rents.

In the town centre, and in the town as a whole the difference in total between the new and old valuations was negligible. One general trend that emerged was a 15% increase in the valuation of small houses. To some extent this may have reflected an improvement in building standards, in particular the replacement of mud and stud houses by brick houses. However, it is also likely that the 1838 valuers disagreed with the reduction in the valuation of small houses that had taken place in 1823.

The only other trend that is clearly identifiable in the figures is a 10% increase in the valuation placed on inns and public houses. This must have arisen because their number had not kept pace with the town’s rising population, even allowing for the advent of beerhouses.

A note at the end of R1838 showed an incomplete understanding of the new law:

The New Law requiring that all Properties shall now be rated at their full value (after deducting expenses for repairs and insurance, &c) it will be observed that the foregoing Valuation exceeds more than double the old one (which was always considered to be at one-half) by £670. 18s. 4d.; but as several new properties are here included, it is evident that the Old Rate, had it been doubled, would have amounted very near to the present Valuation.

Changes before 1851

Much detailed information about individual building changes between 1838 and 1851 was provided by the Louth correspondent of Mercury, William Brown, and there are extensive quotations from his columns in Robinson & Sturman 2001. Brown’s illustrations of town improvements are not easy to trace in the rating lists. The trends of development were similar to those between 1823 and 1838: relatively minor improvements in the town centre but continuing growth of housing elsewhere. One major new street, George Street, had been created.

R1851 and the Small Tenements Rating Act 1850

The reasons for the further revaluation in 1851 were mixed. The preface to R1851 stated that a vestry meeting was held on 12 September 1850 to consider “the propriety of ordering that the Owners of Tenements in this Parish should be rated instead of the Occupiers thereof, and also the propriety of a New Valuation…”. The background to this was that under the Small Tenements Rating Act 1850 vestries could decide to make the owners of any rateable property not exceeding £6 in value liable for the payment of rates. (There had been earlier legislation that partly covered the same ground, but this had not been adopted in Louth.)

The bill that became the 1850 Act was introduced by a backbench MP, his stated reasons being the difficulty in forcing impoverished tenants to pay rates and the harshness of the enforcement methods used; these included the seizure and sale of the tenants’ furniture. Some MPs voiced opposition, particularly because, under the existing law, it was possible for magistrates to exempt occupiers from payment on the ground of poverty; but, if the landlords had to pay the rates, they would increase the rents. This happened in Louth: the borough council increased the annual rents of seven of its cottages by amounts ranging from 4s 6d to 10s pa to reflect the landlord’s new liability for rates.¹1. Borough Estates Committee minutes 28.10.1851. No doubt many private landlords did the same. The 1850 act made a concession to landlords by allowing a 25% discount on the rates that they had to pay. Alternatively landlords could obtain a 50% discount by agreeing to pay rates whether or not the houses were occupied.

Mercury reported in some detail the Louth meeting.²2. Mercury 20.9.1850. The adoption of the change was carried unanimously, though there were expressions of regret that the change would (in the words of J B Sharpley) “operate as a grievance on the poorest of the inhabitants”. Sharpley referred to figures showing that in the parishes of the Louth Poor Law Union the houses with RVs of £6 or less should have produced rates of £457 but only £194 had been collected. (These figures did not explain how much of the non-payment had arisen from exemptions given by the magistrates. Press accounts of exemptions were vague; for example in 1838 a “host of persons were excused their rates … they being unable to pay from poverty.”) ³3. Chronicle 21.9.1838.

The creation of this new obligation on landlords made their identity more important for rating purposes; but R1851 repeated the practice of earlier lists in that the proprietors were normally listed by surnames only.

Unlike the 1836 act, the 1850 act did not create a requirement for a revaluation, but it seems to have encouraged a desire to reduce rating values. T P Waite, solicitor and former mayor, said at the meeting that the values in R1838 were “… far too high, many premises being rated higher than the rents.” Given that the 1838 values usually represented the rents actually paid by tenants at that date, Waite’s comment would have been correct, provided that rents had really declined. Such a decline probably took place for some houses, but a general decline seems highly unlikely. This issue is examined in Valuation note 4.

At the same time Waite raised a different issue: “should the anticipated national or union rating take place, Louth would suffer exceedingly.” Most union expenses were apportioned on a parish basis, with the result that the occupiers of properties of equal value, but in different parishes, might pay widely different rates. Waite’s reference to union rating reflected current discussions about changing the law to make each poor law union a single rating unit. His concern was that, if Louth properties were over-valued, Louth ratepayers would pay an unfairly high share of the poor law union’s expenditure and would in effect be subsidising the union’s other 87 parishes. Union rating was eventually introduced in 1866, but only after an attempt had been made to achieve equality amongst parishes: see Valuation note 3. A revised rating list was produced in 1863, but unfortunately no copy has survived.⁴4. Advertiser 7.3.1863.

Implementation of 1851 Revaluation

In 1851 the valuers tried to implement the 1836 Act by producing valuations that took account of landlords’ expenses. A confused note in R1851 attempted to explain the change.

The decrease of £5443. 18s. 4d. in the New Valuation is in consequence of a lower scale of rating having been adopted; the Old Valuation being at the full yearly value, deducting only a trifle for repairs and insurance, &c.

The allowance for expenses was typically in the vicinity of 15% but, as is shown in the appendix, varied considerably. The allowances were highest for two categories where high wear and tear might be expected: small houses and public houses.

In some cases the allowance appeared to be very low or even nil; presumably the valuers considered that the rent previously estimated was too low. The chance survival of a contemporary lease shows how this may have worked. R1851 showed a house and shop (510005) in Aswell Lane with an old RV of £11 and a new RV of £10, on the face of it an allowance of 9% for expenses. However the lease showed that the tenant was paying an annual rent of £13 2s. The valuers may have thought the old RV was too low, estimated the rent at £13 and made a reduction of about 14% to produce the new RV of £10.

Agricultural land was a different matter. Precise calculations are mostly difficult, because of the way in which agricultural land was grouped with farm buildings, but the valuers seem to have assumed that the reductions for land should be similar to the reductions for buildings. For example John Robinson, a butcher, occupied a house and shop in Mercer Row with old and new RVs of £40 and £33 respectively, a reduction of 17.5%. He also occupied almost 46 acres of grazing land with old and new RVs totalling £119.25 and £99, a reduction of almost 17%. There is no likelihood that his landlords’ expenses on the grazing land were so high. For open land the new RVs in R1851 must be regarded as unreliable.

APPENDIX

Houses

Tables 1A, 1B and 1C include houses partly used for commercial purposes, except for public houses, which are dealt with in table 3. They exclude houses where comparisons between old and new RVs cannot be made, for example because no old value was given in the original or the values were grouped with other properties. Some other records have been excluded where the discrepancy between the old and new values was so great as to indicate rebuilding; a conspicuous example of these is a large house in Westgate, (382409, The Sycamores), the rebuilding of which in 1837 was noted by Pevsner.

Town Centre Buildings

Louth’s “town centre” is not altogether easy to define; in particular Eastgate stretches a long way. For the present purpose the centre is taken to be the streets now called Mercer Row, Market Place, Cornmarket, Rosemary Lane and New Street; Eastgate is excluded. The street names used in the rating lists were partly different. Table 2 summarises the changes in the RVs of the buildings within this area, excluding the inns and public houses. Other exclusions include buildings where the old values were not given.

Public Houses

Table 3 summarises the changes in the RVs of inns and public houses in 1823-51; for a list of the pubs see Inns, Pubs and Beerhouses).

In 1823 Louth had three substantial inns: the King’s Head, the Fleece and the Mason’s Arms, a smaller one, the Crown and Wool-packs and 22 other establishments, some of which provided food and sleeping accommodation and so should be considered inns. By 1838 the Turk’s Head and the Crown and Wool-packs, had been significantly improved, one small pub had closed, and two small new ones had opened. By 1851 the only significant changes were the extension of the King’s Head and the opening of one new pub, the short-lived George.

Inconsistency of R1823 Valuations

In R1823 the most frequent new RV put on houses was £2; there were 219 such. R1838 showed 286 houses with old RVs of £2, which must have included the great majority of the 219, plus considerable new building. If £2 was a half value, one would expect to see the majority appearing in R1838 with new values of £4. However, table 4 shows that this was not the case. The figures suggest firstly that these small houses were generally under-valued in 1823 and secondly that the valuations were done with little attention to detail. In 1823 there was also lack of precision: with only four exceptions, the valuers worked in units of five shillings, which, as they were using half values, really meant units of ten shillings.