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The Valuation Office Agency is a government body in the United Kingdom. It is an executive agency of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The Agency values properties for the purpose of Council Tax and for non-domestic rates in England and Wales (in Scotland this function is performed by the Scottish Assessors). This work is undertaken on behalf of the Department for Communities and Local Government in England, and the Welsh Assembly Government in Wales. The Agency also provides additional valuation services to HM Revenue and Customs through its District Valuer Services business stream. This includes property valuations for the purpose of assessing taxes, such as capital gains and inheritance tax. District Valuer Services also provide a wide range of valuation services to the public sector, such as asset valuations for resource accounting and compulsory purchase advice on the purchase and sale of property, specialist building surveying advice, and valuation of mineral bearing property, landfill sites and plant and machinery. Since April 2008 following a restructure, District Valuer Services has been divided into National and Central Services, who look after the Agency's statutory services to HMRC, and Commercial Services who provide commercial property valuation services to the public sector. The restructuring of the commercial side of the business has been particularly significant as senior managers are now responsible for customer facing sectors of work - such as health or transport and infrastructure - rather than regions, creating a much poorer service. The predecessors of the Valuation Office Agency were the separate Valuation Office organisations in England and Wales (established in 1910) and in Scotland (established in 1911). The Valuation Office Agency was created as a merger of these two and became a Next Steps Agency of the Inland Revenue on 30 September 1991. The VOA employs 3,990 people (full-time equivalent) in 86 offices.〔()〕 It is the largest single employer of Chartered Surveyors in the UK.〔()〕 The current Chief Executive is Penny Ciniewicz appointed in September 2009. The equivalent body to the VOA for Northern Ireland is the Valuation and Lands Agency. In Scotland it is the Scottish Assessors. == History == 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Valuation Office Agency」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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