COMPENSATION PAYABLE IN TRANSACTIONS BETWEEN CERTAIN AUTHORITIES (Hansard, 14 October 1975)

§ Mr. John Silkin

I beg to move Amendment No. 209, in page 26, line 8, leave out from 'person' to end of line 11 and insert: 'from whom the interest is being acquired is a local or new town authority, the Land Authority for Wales, the Peak Park Joint or Lake District Special Planning Board, or a joint board established under section 2 of this Act;

The sole purpose of the amendment is to rectify the omission from Clause 28, as introduced, of local authorities out- 1216 side their areas and joint boards constituted under Clause 2.

In the transitional period of the community land scheme the basis of compensation for land acquired compulsorily by the Crown or any other authority exercising compulsory purchase powers will continue to be market value, assessed in accordance with the rules set out in the 1961 Act and in the equivalent Scottish Act of 1963. The actual cost of land to the land scheme authorities or local authorities buying land from the private sector will be reduced not by changing the market value basis but by enabling them to buy at a price which excludes the amount of development land tax for which the vendor would be liable. But as proposed in draft Clause 10 in the White Paper "Development Land Tax" the land scheme authorities and local authorities outside their areas or in Wales will not be liable to development land tax.

If, therefore, it should be decided that certain transfers between authorities should take place on the same basis as acquisitions from the private sector, that is to say, with the acquiring authority receiving the benefit of the reduced price facility, the Secretary of State will need to be able to modify the rules in the Land Compensation Acts in their application to such transactions to produce a "net of notional tax" result. These modifications cannot be spelt out in the Community Land Bill because they will depend on the final terms of the Development Land Tax Bill, but they will also provide the basis for achieving the same result in the overwhelming majority of cases where transfers of land between public authorities are effected by agreement, since the practice is to relate the considerations for such transfers to the compulsory purchase basis.