Council Tax Rises Above Inflation – Is there an alternative?

Tom99

lincroft1710 wrote: »

The revaluation was actually scheduled to come into force on 1 April 2007. When it was cancelled in either August or September 2005, there had been very little if any work done on establishing values. Most of the temporary staff had been involved in updating the VOA property record database.

It was most definitely not "largely completed"

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The valuation date was, I think, April 2005 and the revaluation was not cancelled until Sept 2005 by which time the VO had a fully functioning Automated Valuation Model which had been extensively calibrated and tested on all properties in England, they were close to pressing the final button to produce the actual values which would be used.[/FONT]

lincroft1710

Tom99 wrote: »

The bands are the same for the whole country they are not individual to each LA so there is no reason why, as a whole, there could not be the same number of properties in each band.

And how would you go about doing this? Without analysing every value? For 1993 the bands were decided, then the dwellings were banded.

It actually doesn't matter how many dwellings there are per band. As long as there are sufficient bands and they encompass a reasonable value range. There would definitely be far more bands than at present.

Tom99

lincroft1710 wrote: »

And how would you go about doing this? Without analysing every value?

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Because that is the way a revaluation would be undertaken, every property would have an individual assessment of value not just the new band it was in.[/FONT]

lincroft1710

Tom99 wrote: »

Because that is the way a revaluation would be undertaken, every property would have an individual assessment of value not just the new band it was in.

No. Dwellings were never actually valued, they were just put in bands. The VOA never attributes a value to a dwelling, just places it in a band. Which is what would happen with a revaluation.

lincroft1710

Tom99 wrote: »

The valuation date was, I think, April 2005 and the revaluation was not cancelled until Sept 2005 by which time the VO had a fully functioning Automated Valuation Model which had been extensively calibrated and tested on all properties in England, they were close to pressing the final button to produce the actual values which would be used.

There was far more work still to be done, I do not remember any AVM which was tested on all dwellings (which would be very difficult as by that time not all dwellings that needed inspecting had been inspected). If an AVM was ready then the revaluation could have been completed a year early.

With the cancellation of the revaluation, a lot of staff (myself included) became disillusioned, so when the opportunity for early retirement occurred days later, myself and many others seized it with glee

Tom99

lincroft1710 wrote: »

There was far more work still to be done, I do not remember any AVM which was tested on all dwellings (which would be very difficult as by that time not all dwellings that needed inspecting had been inspected). If an AVM was ready then the revaluation could have been completed a year early.

With the cancellation of the revaluation, a lot of staff (myself included) became disillusioned, so when the opportunity for early retirement occurred days later, myself and many others seized it with glee

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]As I said above there was a fully functioning Automated Valuation Model which had been worked on for some time by a large team and by Sept 2005 had been dry run on all properties several times already.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]These dry runs produced an individual value for each property. There were a few gaps but by that time much of the upgrading of data had been complete.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]April 2007 is the date tax would be paid on the new bands not the date the revaluation had to be ready.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The plan was to publish the new draft list to the general public some time in 2006 so they could make (informal I think) representations to the VO if they thought they were in the wrong band.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Sounds like you worked for the VO at the time but maybe not on the AVM part of the revaluation?[/FONT]

lincroft1710

I worked for VOA from 1970 to 2006, the last 12 years settling CT appeals. Although colleagues were inspecting dwellings to update records there were still many dwellings left to inspect by Sep 2005. I can only assume that the AVM was being trialled at a selected office or offices, or Head Office as from memory no-one in my office was involved with this.

If the AVM was so far advanced and the money had been spent, it seems rather short sighted to have cancelled the revaluation.

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]It was not being trialled it was up and running and fully functioning. Each VO office had a Group Calibrator (maybe not the smallest offices) and there was a small central team of National Calibrators who were responsible for running the AVM.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The model was run by LA area so each model would attempt to value lets say 80,000 properties in that area, based on sales of lets say 4,000 properties which had taken place over the sales window which I think was two years.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Every property in England was valued that way.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]It was cancelled because of the negative press and public reaction made it a vote loser, 'Council Tax Snoopers' as they were called.[/FONT]

lincroft1710

I certainly don't remember a Group Calibrator or anyone who was doing that sort of work. Were you involved in this then as you know so much about it?

00ec25

seeing as this has descended into a 1 on 1 chat it would help everyone else to know who knows what

we "know" Lincroft is retired VOA,
is Tom99 ex (current?) VOA staff, an IT contractor, or merely someone else, if so what?