The Whitechapel Art Gallery is a registered charity and displays works of art to the general public for no consideration. It acquired an old derelict library building adjacent to its existing premises for £900k with the intention of converting it into a gallery.

Whitechapel gained planning permission and listed building consent for the conversion and alteration of the existing building and library to extend the gallery’s facilities, with new gallery space, archive reading room, exhibition space and storage, education facilities and café together with supporting services infrastructure. The total cost of the refurbishment was expected to be around £10.5m.Whitechapel and HMRC had  agreed that some of the works could  be zero-rated on the basis that they were alteration works to a building used for  a relevant charitable purpose. Similarly, zero-rating also applied to works that enabled disabled access.