The Valuation Office Agency

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 25 February 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:32, 25 February 2020

I thank the Member. I want to agree with her that the performance of the VOA in specific instances of the current appeals process is not satisfactory. But the Member does need to recognise that this is quite properly an entirely independent arm of Government, and it has to be. It's right that it is. I did ask my officials yesterday to see whether the VOA could provide me with any further updates on the two instances that the Member has written to me about over recent months, and they refused to provide those details. They refused to provide the details because they said it would not be proper for them to disclose to Government the confidential matters that they have to determine with the people who use their service. And, on reflection, I think they were right. That's why we have arm's length organisations, so that Governments don't make these decisions; the VOA does.

Now, if the VOA is not delivering on its service level agreement with us, then we need to put that right. But my way of putting it right is probably different to the Member's, because I want us to change the appeal system in Wales altogether. The appeal system is not fit for purpose. It's been changed in England and has run into enormous difficulties there. What we have said is that we have brought forward the revaluation from 2022 to 2021, provided the UK Government stick to that—it was interesting to see that they didn't have anything in their Queen's Speech to put that commitment on to the statute book, but it's a commitment they've given in the past. If they honour it, then we want to change the appeal system here in Wales, alongside that revaluation, because it's just leading up to and just following a revaluation, Llywydd, that the appeals come in. We want a new system next time around, and that will allow us, I believe, to avoid some of the difficulties that we've seen with the current system.