Urenco Chemplants Ltd and another v HMRC

In Urenco Chemplants Ltd and another v HMRC [2022] UKUT 22 (TCC) (28 January 2022) the Upper Tribunal (UT) considered the company’s appeal against the FTT’s decision denying plant and machinery capital allowances on expenditure on the construction of a nuclear deconversion facility. It concluded that the FTT’s decision had included several errors of law and remitted the case back to the FTT to remake the decision. 

The company spent £1bn constructing a ‘tails management facility’ for the processing of depleted uranium tails. The treatment for capital allowances of most of the expenditure was agreed but £192m was disputed by HMRC. The FTT dismissed the company’s appeal. It held firstly that some of the disputed assets were merely part of the setting in which plant and machinery functioned and so were not themselves plant. However all of the assets were excluded by CAA 2001 s 21 as...