2480. CHAIRMAN: I think if there is a proper compulsory purchase there is now provision in statute for a small amount to be paid upfront. Whether that applies to a blight notice I do not now remember.

  2481. MS LIEVEN: What there is, and I will be clutched by Mr Mould or Mr Smith if I get this wrong, is in a compulsory purchase situation a significant amount of compensation is paid right at the beginning. I think it is actually a large percentage, not a small percentage. What I do not know is whether that includes fees. My Lord, the figure I had in mind is correct, it is 90 per cent paid in advance but it is on entry. The difficulty one has with a blight notice is there is no entry on the land.

  2482. BARONESS FOOKES: That is what makes it blight.

  2483. MS LIEVEN: Precisely, my Lady, that is what makes it blight. So the 90 per cent payment figure does not apply. What I do not know is whether that 90 per cent covers fees or not. It can include partly fees.

  2484. CHAIRMAN: But there is no provision in the blight notice procedures, even if the blight notice is accepted by the public authority, for an upfront payment.

  2485. MS LIEVEN: That is right. If I put up the relevant provision, and I am afraid Mr Mould has scribbled over it, he did not realise that I was going to put it up.[13] This is the provision that fixes the date for valuation: "If the value of the land is to be assessed in accordance with rule 2 in section 5, a valuation must be made as at the relevant valuation date. No adjustment is to be made to the valuation in respect of anything which happens after the relevant date. If the land is the subject of a notice to treat the relevant valuation date is the earlier of (a) the date when the acquiring authority enters on and takes possession of the land, and (b) the date when the assessment is made."

  2486. Section 154 of the Town and Country Planning Act deems the land where a blight notice has been accepted to be subject to a notice to treat. So we get into section 5(a), this is the 1961 Land Compensation Act. We get into subsection (3) here by reason of the deemed notice to treat and then the valuation date is either (a) or (b). Because we have not entered the land and are unlikely to enter the land—I am not sure what the precise date we are likely to enter land in Hayne Street is but it certainly will not be until after Royal Assent, and it may be some time after that—the important date is likely to be (b), the date when the assessment is made. Unlike a compulsory purchase, where everything is triggered by the date of entry, with a blight notice the trigger point is likely to be only the date when the assessment is made.

  2487. CHAIRMAN: Is that right, it is not when the notice is accepted?

  2488. MS LIEVEN: It is not when the notice is accepted, my Lord, no.

  2489. CHAIRMAN: Well, how do you get any further about making an assessment?

  2490. MS LIEVEN: My Lord, I understand the way it works is that the parties who are negotiating effectively take a realistic view of the date when the assessment is going to be agreed is likely to be. Unless one was in a very, very rapidly changing market the precise date probably would not matter very much. I can see that there could be problems in a market which was falling or rising by 20 per cent a year or something like that. Mr Mould is making the point that in practice the negotiations will take place at current values.

  2491. CHAIRMAN: My difficulty about this is if we are being asked to step into the shoes of the Lands Tribunal we have got to choose a date, have we not?

  2492. MS LIEVEN: If your Lordships were seriously considering stepping into the shoes of the Lands Tribunal you would have to do a lot more. Choosing the date, as it were, would be the least of the problems.

  2493. CHAIRMAN: I quite agree, but we could not even contemplate valuation evidence until we knew the date of the valuation evidence.

  2494. MS LIEVEN: I think what you would find both sides' valuers did was assume the date they wrote their evidence as the valuation date. That is how it would work in practice. Say you are writing your proof of evidence and you know the Lands Tribunal is not going to be for another three months, you will write your evidence for today's date. As I say, it would only be if you were in a rapidly depreciating or appreciating market that that difference would be material.

  2495. BARONESS FOOKES: On a factual point, I am not clear whether both parties have to agree to go to a Lands Tribunal or whether it can be unilateral.

  2496. MS LIEVEN: It can be unilateral, my Lady. We did contemplate referring the matter ourselves to the Lands Tribunal but we felt, perhaps wrongly, that Mr Saunderson would feel that was a gun being put to his head and it was more appropriate either that he referred it or that we did so jointly. We have made it absolutely clear to Mr Saunderson that we are wholly supportive of a reference to the Lands Tribunal just to break what is an impasse at the moment.

  2497. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: If you referred it to the Lands Tribunal tomorrow, when would it likely get a hearing?

  2498. MS LIEVEN: Let me ask Mr Bailey, who is behind me, because he is most likely to know that. We think, my Lord, and Mr Bailey is Head of Group Property at Transport for London so he is very experienced in this matter, a two day hearing, which is what this realistically would be, six to nine months. It would probably be heard in the autumn.

  2499. CHAIRMAN: And they would then have a date on the basis upon which to fix a valuation?