The judgment arrived at the Municipal Tribunal at 9:15 AM on Monday, bound in the tribunal’s customary grey card, twenty-six pages of close reasoning that took Magistrate Constance Hathaway six days to write. It took the city approximately forty-five minutes to understand what it meant, and approximately ten minutes after that to begin arguing about it.

The appeal is dismissed. The levy stands. The penalties stand. The distinction between emptiness and vacancy — upon which Edmond Crayle built his argument with characteristic precision — did not survive the tribunal.

“The Vacant Building Levy Act of 2014 defines vacancy by reference to use, not to intention,” Hathaway writes in the opening section of her analysis. “A building in which no work is being done, no person is present, and no utility consumption consistent with occupation is recorded is vacant within the meaning of the Act. The applicant’s submission that a building undergoing ‘active consideration’ for redevelopment is not vacant finds no support in the statute, the regulations, or the case law cited.”

The ruling addresses each of Crayle’s arguments in turn. On procedure — his claim that the Revenue Office accelerated its assessment in response to the Docklands safety audit — Hathaway is brisk: “The timing of a lawful demand does not render it unlawful. That the audit revealed the very conditions the levy was designed to address is not evidence of political motivation. It is evidence of the levy’s purpose.”

On the Harbourfront Parade warehouse, where the Revenue Office had already conceded a partial reduction of approximately 120,000 florins on the basis of a November 2025 building permit, Hathaway notes that this concession demonstrates precisely the distinction Crayle was unable to establish for the remaining properties. “Where genuine preparatory activity exists, the Revenue Office has recognised it. Where it does not, the levy applies.”

The September 2024 architect’s letter regarding Chandler’s Row — which Hathaway examined for two minutes during the hearing and which Wainscott produced from a lever-arch file that subsequently lost a ring — receives three paragraphs of analysis. Hathaway concludes that a preliminary inquiry to an architect, without a subsequent instruction, a site visit, or a planning application, does not constitute active preparation for renovation.

“One letter in twenty months,” she writes, “is not a programme of redevelopment. It is a filing cabinet.”

The penalties — approximately 34,700 florins for the first month, accruing at 1.5 percent monthly — are upheld. Hathaway declines to apply the 2019 precedent Crayle cited, noting that in that case the underlying property classification was genuinely disputed, while here the buildings are, as the Revenue Office’s senior enforcement solicitor Margaret Poynton observed, simply empty.

The total demand, including accrued penalties through April, now stands at approximately 2.41 million florins.

Crayle, speaking outside the tribunal to a small group of reporters, said his client was “reviewing its options” and that the judgment raised “significant questions about the scope of municipal taxing power that may warrant further consideration.” Wainscott stood behind him. The lever-arch files were not in evidence.

At City Hall, Councilwoman Pryce issued a written statement within the hour. “The tribunal has confirmed what the audit demonstrated: that the vacant building levy exists for a reason, and that reason is the safety of this city’s buildings and the people who live near them. I call on the full council to adopt the mandatory annual inspection regime at its next sitting.”

Councilman Voss, reached by telephone, was characteristically concise. “Two million four hundred thousand florins,” he said. “That builds four fire stations. Or funds one year of the geological survey. Or replaces the windows at Marchmont Street Primary, which I am told have not been opened since 1987.”

The Revenue Office, through a spokeswoman, said it was “satisfied that the tribunal has upheld the lawfulness of the demand in its entirety” and that it would “pursue collection through the standard enforcement process.”

Gerald Ashcroft, through his solicitor, declined to comment beyond the statement already issued.

The mandatory annual inspection motion — Pryce’s proposal arising from the 47-page Docklands audit — is expected on the agenda for the next full council meeting in early May. The audit identified 18 irregularities across 72 properties. The shoring of the Harbourfront Parade warehouse, completed in March, cost Hallam & Stroud approximately 42,000 florins — a sum that, as Voss noted at the time, would have been unnecessary had anyone inspected the building before the wall began to lean.

Hathaway’s judgment will be published in the Municipal Tribunal Reports in due course. It is, by any measure, a thorough document. Whether it is the final word depends on whether Crayle’s reference to “further consideration” means what it usually means when a solicitor says it outside a courthouse.

The lever-arch files, presumably, will be repaired.