Interview: Penny Ciniewicz, Valuation Office Agency

Producing a play involves a lot of co-ordination: a range of people must be brought together from a variety of backgrounds including acting, music, stage management, sound engineering, lighting, design and props. This job is done by the theatre director – a role Penny Ciniewicz, chief executive at the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), held before joining the civil service.

Ciniewicz’s experiences in theatre may come in handy at the VOA, which also combines a lot of different work streams. It is responsible for compiling and maintaining lists of rateable values of businesses in England and Wales, on which the collection of £23bn of local taxation rests, as well as setting the banding of domestic properties which determines £22bn in council tax. This work is carried out by some 1,000 chartered surveyors employed by the VOA; it also sets local housing benefit caps, provides valuation advice to HMRC in connection with capital gains and inheritance tax, and advises around 2,200 public sector bodies on issues such as compulsory purchases and strategic asset management. “We advise the health sector, local authorities, transport infrastructure, housing associations. You name it, we probably do it,” Ciniewicz says, smiling enthusiastically.

The complexity of the agency doesn’t stop there: while it’s an executive agency of HM Revenue and Customs – and relies on its parent body for back-office functions including payroll, audits and legal services – its funding comes from whichever public body requires its services. And with its primary functions lying in local taxation, the VOA’s biggest source of income is the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), which also sets most of its policies.

So Ciniewicz’s theatreland skills come in handy in her current job, she tells CSW: “I developed the means of delivering projects on time and within tight budgets, as well as good leadership skills.” Having worked as a director specialising in new writing, putting on plays in venues such as The Royal Court and West Yorkshire Playhouse, she entered Whitehall via the Fast Stream programme 16 years ago. Yet her past life remains close at hand: she works in the heart of London’s theatre scene, on Shaftesbury Avenue.

As a director, she’ll have become used to hearing some harsh views from theatre critics; and in her new job, too, her productions have come under fire. Recently, for example, the government decided to delay the five-yearly revaluation of business rates by two years, until 2017 – conveniently after the general election. The move was heavily criticised by businesses and property experts concerned about out-of-date business rates. So, given that the VOA’s chartered surveyors had already started work on the 2015 list, was the decision to delay a problem for the VOA? “No: we do what ministers want us to do,” she says quickly. It was “very early days”, therefore the amount of work that had been wasted was “very limited”, she insists. Asked to clarify whether “very limited” means hours, days, weeks or months, she says: “Small numbers of people and limited amounts of work”.

Council tax rates, meanwhile, haven’t been reviewed for 20 years. Asked whether it’s appropriate to operate with such old figures, Ciniewicz makes it clear that her job is delivery – not producing or commenting on policy. “It’s not my place to say,” she says. She’s happier to talk about the VOA’s efforts to cut costs in this Parliament: since 2009-10, the VOA’s income has fallen by about 17% and staffing has been reduced by 500 to 3,500. The agency has also been rationalising its office space, closing ten of its 82 offices around the country. But there is still work to be done, Ciniewicz says: “We’re continually looking to rationalise the space we use. We have more space than we need at the moment, so we’re looking to reduce as much as we can… to make sure that we as a property organisation really make the best use of the estate we have.” By the end of the year, the VOA expects to have reduced its estate by 45% since 2008.

As well as efficiency savings, public bodies and departments are also being driven towards ensuring their services are increasingly ‘digital by default’ – and the VOA is no exception. But Ciniewicz is not ready to give details about how this is progressing at the VOA: “We’re not yet at the stage where we’re using many digital channels for our data,” she says. “We don’t offer a digital by default service for the majority of our lines of business at the moment.” And asked whether the data collection carried out by the agency’s surveyors is all still done with pen and paper, she replies: “Yes, yes, absolutely – and then we come back and translate it into our systems.”

Modernising the VOA in this respect will be a “significant transformation” that the VOA is looking to “invest in over the next few years”, she says. However, she’s is vague over the details of this modernisation plan, declining to name timeframes or sums: “We haven’t finalised the plans for it yet so it’s a bit early to say [how much we’ll invest], but we look to invest a reasonable amount in terms of capital every year to develop our IT and the skills base in the business.”

Leading the organisation through change while maintaining a good service to clients has been a major challenge, Ciniewicz says, calling on the skills she learnt in her previous career: both the theatre and the civil service world require a great “focus on delivering”. But when putting on a play, the measures of success are very obvious: “As a theatre director, people either enjoy what you do, buy tickets and turn up, or they don’t. But here you have to work a bit harder to understand how your customers feel,” she says.

One way for the VOA to determine whether its customers are content is to consider the number of appeals against its decisions. Anyone who believes they are paying too much in business rates or council tax, for instance, can appeal to the Valuation Tribunal. Currently, business rate specialists have told CSW, the VOA has a backlog of 180,000 business rate appeals – mostly relating to the 2010 valuations. But Ciniewicz says: “Whether it’s a backlog or not, I think, is a debate. We have a number of appeals in the system.” Around 9,500 of these, she adds, relate to the 2005 valuations – and there the VOA has passed all necessary data to the tribunal. Meanwhile, the agency’s increased the rate at which it processes the 2010 cases: in 2012-13 it cleared 24% more than in 2011-12 – a total of 236,000.

Tackling the appeals is a priority and will remain one, she adds. Will there be a target of appeals to clear for the following year? “It’s difficult to have a target,” she says. “Obviously, appeals aren’t all the same – they’re not all of the same complexity: some require more or less work, depending on the challenges that are being made, so it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.”

Whether it’s on clearing casework, on going digital by default, or on rationalising property, the VOA has some catching up to do on reform. It has so far been broadly shielded from the spotlight – for, as Ciniewicz observes, the organisation is “not terrifically well known. Unless you’re an afficiado of local government finance, you probably haven’t come across us”. But given the importance ascribed to civil service reform, it may not be able to hide behind the curtain of anonymity for much longer.