Foreword

Last year's Forward Plan launched a strategic vision for the Valuation Office for the next five years. One year on, that plan has largely stood the test of time. The challenge of modernising business rates by greater involvement of the ratepayer, better information and greater transparency in valuations remains key.

However, to that task has now been added the challenge of conducting a council tax revaluation of all 1.3 million domestic properties in Wales as at 1 April 2005 with a revaluation of a further 21 million properties in England to follow in 2007.

Our non local tax business - the work we do for the Inland Revenue and for other public sector clients - was reorganised last year into a new organisational stream. On Revenue work what we have to do is make our activities more responsive to the department's needs by tying resource and effort more closely to tax at risk and liaising more closely with case managers in the Revenue. And on other public sector work the organisational change laid the foundations for growing the work whilst breaking even and recovering full resource costs. What we need to do now is to market our services more effectively and win back the market share lost in past years.

This will take a lot of effort by all our people. 2001/ 02 also saw important foundations laid for better management of people through modernisation of nearly all our personnel procedures and through the recruitment and advancement of new talent. Now we need to take that process further to ensure that the values of the organisation become a reality. In particular 2002/ 03 will be the year when we practically test out and implement new concepts of teamwork in valuation. The engagement of our people and the constructive approach of our trade union to all the organisational and pay and grading changes and to the business process reviews which we undertook last year were firm foundations on which to build.

Another theme of next year is likely to be one of external partnerships. We need to use the framework of e- government to work with our IT and other suppliers and with other parts of the local taxation and government property systems to deliver a more efficient, more responsive and more `joined- up' service. To do this, we depend on the positive involvement of all our public sector clients who set the policies within which we operate. The three largest of these - the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, the National Assembly for Wales and the Inland Revenue are now joined with us in an Advisory Board which takes a strategic overview and monitoring role and works at ensuring all the clients' demands on us are consistent. We are grateful to them for their part in shaping this plan and our strategy.

Michael Johns
April 2002