Valuation Office Agency
Background
At the 2013 Autumn Statement, the government announced the introduction of a commitment to resolve 95% of all outstanding appeals by July 2015. The text included in the Autumn Statement is replicated here:
1.164 The rating system should provide an easy to use and prompt opportunity for ratepayers to understand their rateable value and challenge it if necessary. However, the current system lacks transparency, and large volumes of unsuccessful, sometimes speculative, appeals create delays for other businesses. Progress has been made on reducing the backlog in appeals, but it is still too high with over 168,000 cases outstanding as at September 2013. The government:
- announces a commitment to resolve 95% of outstanding cases by July 2015. "
This web page reports progress against this commitment for July 2015, and the methodology used to monitor progress. This is the last update as at 31 July 2015.
Please note that these are not formally badged as official statistics, but are instead published Management Information.
In this release appeals are considered to be outstanding when they have not been resolved and the rating list has not been updated at 30 September 2013. It excludes appeals that are registered after this date (including those that are reinstated after being resolved prior to 30 September 2013). Performance is assessed by looking at the proportion of outstanding appeals which have been resolved by 31 July 2015.
Appeals are no longer outstanding when they have been resolved, and the Rating List has been updated where changes have been made. This would include any appeals that are subsequently withdrawn.
In previous releases we have been unable to identify appeals resolved following Tribunal Hearing as cleared. Improvements to our methodology have now correctly identified these appeals as resolved. The change in methodology has been applied to all previous months, but has only a very small impact on the numbers resolved in a given month. It has not, therefore resulted in an increase in the overall percentage of appeals resolved.
This release covers both the 2005 and 2010 Rating Lists, and provides totals for those cases outstanding and those cases cleared (which are grouped according to the quarter within which the Rating List was updated).
Results
The table and chart show progress on a quarterly basis in Interested Person Proposals (IPPs) and Land Tribunal (LT) cases that were outstanding at the end of September 2013 in England. As this is the final update, the table and chart show the final position at 31 July 2015. 94.3 per cent of the appeals that were outstanding as at 30 September 2013 have now been resolved.