Catalogue description Records of the Valuation Office

The record sheet plans are arranged according to the administrative regions within the district valuation offices, as those regions and offices existed in 1988.

The Board of Inland Revenue's Valuation Office originated in 1909 as a branch of the Estate Duty Office dealing with the valuation of real property for estate duty purposes. The Finance (1909-10) Act, 1910 introduced land values legislation, the main object of which was to tax that part of the capital appreciation of real property which was attributable to the site, i.e. excluding crops, buildings and other development works paid for by the owners; private owners were required to surrender to the State some part of the increase in the site value of their land which arose from the expenditure of public money on communal developments such as roads or public services. The tax so raised was termed increment value duty. The Act charged the Board of Inland Revenue with making a valuation of all real property in the United Kingdom as at 30 April 1910; on 23 March 1910 the Valuation Office was constituted as a separate office for this purpose. This original land valuation exercise was largely completed in 1915.

The duties of the Valuation Office have been discharged mainly through a network of local offices, districts and regions which have all been reorganised on a number of occasions since 1910. In 1914 there were 118 valuation districts in 14 regions of England and Wales, each in the charge of a district valuer. Each district comprised a number of income tax parishes, which were considered to be the most convenient units for administering increment value duty. Each Valuation Office undertook the valuation of all properties within its area.

The Office soon began to receive requests for valuation assistance from other departments of the Board and from other government departments, and by the end of the First World War had become virtually a government valuation office. Although, following the 1920 Finance Act, nearly all the duties on land values were repealed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed in a minute of 1920 to the retention of the Office for the performance of certain permanent functions. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Office became responsible for the collection and collation of war damage claims to property but this work was transferred to the newly-established War Damage Commission in 1941. Thereafter, the Office gave assistance to the Commission in assessing compensation under the War Damage Acts; it also gave similar assistance to the Board of Trade in connection with the chattels scheme under the same Acts.

The main duty of the Office has been to provide professional valuation advice to government departments. It has a certain share in the assessment of Inland Revenue taxes, mostly in connection with capital transfer tax. The Office formerly acted as arbitrator, where the parties so desired, in disputes over compensation for the acquisition of land, but since1949 this has been a function of the Lands Tribunal. The valuation of property for rating purposes, formerly the responsibility of local authorities under the guidance of a Central Valuation Committee and the Railway Assessment Authority, was performed from 1950 by valuation officers appointed by the Board. In 1958 the Office acquired from the Ministry of Works functions relating to compensation of landowners for the ill effects to property of opencast coal mining and negotiations for the use of land for such operations.

The work of the Office increased so that by the mid-1960s there were twenty-five regional offices. There is a separate Valuation Office for Scotland.