Valuation Office Agency (VOA) Management Board Meeting

25th March 2004

ATTENDEES

Risk Management

The purpose of this paper was to invite Management Board members to consider and approve the summary of VOA high-level risks. The summary contained the top twenty risks to the VOA.

The summary of risks was re-written bi-annually and checked and amended each year in between. This had been done at the weekly meeting on the 11 March. The risks needed to be recorded as agreed by the Management Board before being presented to the Audit Committee on 26 March.

The summary of risks was discussed by the Management Board and agreed subject to a few minor amendments.

SR 2004

The purpose of this paper was to provide further information on the progress of SR 2004.

The paper included some judgement decisions and showed high level figures as bids to clients. The VOA was expected to provide these revised figures to its clients very soon. . There would then be a further stage of review in late summer or autumn but it was hoped that the paper gave realistic levels of contingency and realistic bids, which were reduced from earlier estimates, especially in the first year, providing clear evidence for our clients that we were taking serious steps to reduce costs.

Productivity gains would vary year on year but the VOA was projecting achieving savings of 5% per annum overall.

Geographic Information Strategy

The purpose of the paper introduced by Paul Sanderson was to consider the VOA’s use of, and need for, geographic information and to determine a strategy to guide the development of a geographic information system for the VOA.

The paper followed on from the OS presentation to the MB at the December 2003 workshop but it was necessary to have a GI strategy statement in place before proceeding.

The Pan Government Agreement for the supply of Ordnance Survey data provided a foundation of consistent geographic information in the form of Mastermap. The VOA hadn’t made use of this and required our own software to incorporate it into our database.

The benefits to the Agency were:

• GIS would become the central point for the collation and display of data enabling the VOA to pull together the disparate data that exists within the Agency.
  
• The topographical layer would allow the Agency to carry out a matching exercise with our database particularly in relation to non-addressable hereditaments.
  
• There would be increased flexibility with an ability to monitor and identify changes within the landscape.
  
• The accuracy of analysis and valuations would be enhanced by access to the most current information available.
  
• The Agency’s image would be enhanced by the increased quality and consistency of data.

No cost savings were envisaged by the GI strategy although it would enable the VOA to improve the quality of the service it already provides.

The next step was to set out a business case covering the cost of the software and links to the databases and also the cost of the databases themselves.

Workforce Planning Update

The purpose of the paper was to provide an update of the need requirements for the period 2004-2010 as requested by the Board in January, to examine how the Agency’s operational needs impact on HR responsibilities of recruitment, advancements, training, accommodation and pay at a strategic level and to set out HR’s plans to achieve the staffing levels to meet those needs.

HR informed the Board that they were more satisfied with the short term position although they would continue to monitor the CT situation. It was expected that 60% of valuations carried out by the AVM would not require significant manual intervention. Some contingency work was being done in the event of this being amended.

There were still some peaks and troughs in Bands 3 and 4 and there was a concern that there would be difficulties recruiting staff for Band 3 posts. These could be smoothed through downreaching and layering.

There was concern that DVS would suffer if there were problems recruiting sufficient Band 3’s. HR informed the Board that DVS posts would be filled first as this was critical.

The Board agreed that the workforce planning document should be a dynamic document and regularly updated.

Training & Development Programme for 2004/5

The purpose of this paper was to suggest to the Management Board how training resources should be spent in 2004/5 through the submission of a Strategic Training and Development Plan.

The Board were concerned that the management training was focused on new managers only. A new management development programme scheduled for the autumn would be aimed at key new and existing managers.

Rather than focusing management training on individual bands the intention was to take the Group Management team as a whole and to give them training together.

In order to drive efficiencies a Group Manager post would be created in Training and Development Services to monitor the budget. The efficiency target was to keep within financial limits although a model would be produced to contain more robust measures such as benchmarking.

It was necessary to see a payback of money invested in training to show that efficiencies had been created throughout the network.

There was a desire to capture the resource used and benefit gained from on the job training. TDS were looking at an evaluation on a number of levels but were experiencing difficulties in obtaining actual costs. DVS had included this information within their work measurement.

Training for finance staff would be reviewed and amended to provide a more focused package.

R2005 – Valuation Downloads

The purpose of the paper, which was for information only, was to advise the Management Board on progress being made with the production of 2005 valuations against target and to provide an early indication of the effects of the revaluation.

The targets set so far had been successfully achieved with 88.86% of valuations completed. There was still concern over the number of valuations that have been validated.