SHOE firm bosses in Rossendale have won a partial victory in a battle with the taxman.

Management at Winfield Shoes, Hazel Mill, Blackburn Road, Haslingden, believed their business rates, at £174,000, were too high.

So with the help of surveyors the Rosssendale firm lodged an objection with the Valuation Tribunal, in a bid to reduce their annual outgoing.

Initially they wanted the bill reduced to £124,500 - but after a climbdown by Valuation Service surveyors they have been awarded a reduction to £146,000 instead.

TWJ Dawson, an expert surveyor representing Winfields, told a tribunal hearing in Preston that the mill property had been overvalued.

Comparable sites such as Tommy Balls, in Blackburn, Barden Mill, Burnley, and the Junction 12 Retail Park, Nelson, all had rateable values of around £30 per metre.

But values at Hazel Mill, a former cotton mill built in 1870, was set at £38.75 at ground floor level and £35 elsewhere.

Chris Robinson, for the Valuation Service, accepted that the initial rateable value was "excessive."

But he believed other mill sites, like Boundary Mill in Colnewere more comparable to Hazel Mill, and all were rated £40 per metre or above.

The tribunal panel ruled that a case had not been made for reducing the rateable value to £30 per metre as the similar mills mentioned by Mr Dawson were not a like-for-like comparison.

But the three-strong tribunal accepted the case that the initial valuation had been too high and adopted a revised figure of £146,000 instead, backdated to April 2005.