Valuation Office 1910 To 2007
The Finance Act of 1910 introduced a new land value tax on that part of the capital appreciation of a property which followed from the expenditure of public money on communal development such as roads or other public services.
In order to apply this tax it was necessary to value all property in the UK and the Inland Revenue set up the Valuation Office to carry out this task. This led to the Valuation Office Survey (1910-1915).
The VO soon began to receive requests from other Government Departments for valuation assistance a task which it continues to undertake today. It was this other government work that lead to the VO's retention after the 1910 land value tax was abolished in the 1920s.
During the following years the VO took on some major tasks such in 1931 which saw a further proposed tax on land values and from 1939 to 1945 when it valued property destroyed by enemy action in the UK during the Second World War.
In 1950 the role of the VO was expanded when it took over responsibility for the valuation of property in England and Wales for rating purposes. Prior to this year it had been the task of each local authority to compile and maintain its own rating list but this had led to inconsistencies in valuations. When in 1948 a new system of Government equalisation grants to Local Authorities was introduced uniformity in rating valuation was essential and this could only be provided by a central organisation such as the VO.
It was not feasible to absorb the extra rating staff and work into the 100 existing VO offices so a separate network of 268 new offices were opened with the majority of their staff being transferred from local authorities.
Each local office was headed by a District Valuer responsible for all of the rating and revenue work within the geographical responsibility of his office. There were regional offices each headed by a Superintending Valuer who was responsible for the general management of the District Valuers within his region and liaison between the local offices and the Chief Valuer's Office in London.
Over the years the number of offices has reduced as the rating and other functions of the VO were combined into so called "integrated" offices and the network was slimmed down as the number of local offices were closed and by 1996 there were only 93.
Staffing numbers have varied in accordance with the workload peaking in the years around the times of rating revaluations when it was necessary to increase staff to carry the revaluation and to settle appeals arising from it. So in 1965 there were around 7,000 compared to 2,600 prior to 1950. By 1994/5 there were 4,775 permanent staff.
In 1998 the VO underwent a large scale re-organisation which saw a large reduction in the size of the regional layer of management and the closure of Regional offices. The District Valuer post in the local office was abolished and there was a reorganisation of the local offices into 24 Groups each headed by a Group Valuation Officer. A number of regionally based Specialist Rating Units were set up to take over responsibility from the local offices for the more complex or higher value non-domestic rating assessments. As part of this re-organisation further offices were closed leaving a total of 85.
Read more about this topic: Valuation Office Agency
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