Contract to Supply Footfall Data for Town Centres in England and Wales for the Valuation Office Agency

The Valuation Office Agency (VOA) is an executive agency of His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

As the public sector's property valuation experts, we provide valuations and property advice to the government and local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales to support taxation and targeted financial support for families and individuals.

The VOA also provides property valuation and surveying services to public sector bodies.

Its work includes:

• compiling and maintaining lists of council tax bands for approximately 26 million domestic properties.
• compiling and maintaining lists detailing the rateable value of over 2 million commercial properties for business rates.
• determining Local Housing Allowance rates across England.
• advising local authorities of the maximum subsidy level payable for Housing Benefit claims under the local reference rent system.
• maintaining a register of fair rents for regulated tenancies in England.
• providing statutory valuations to support taxes administered by HMRC and the administration of benefits by the Department for Work and Pensions; and
• providing a range of independent property advice and valuations across the public sector.

Please see www.voa.gov.uk ↗ for further details.

The Agency provides services for different types of customers including:

• Occupiers and owners across non-domestic and domestic properties, who may not appoint a representative or trusted helper to interact on their behalf.
• Billing Authorities - when they engage with a VOA service or act an intermediary on behalf of customers.
• Other public bodies - who require valuations or property advice from the VOA to carry out their functions.

The footfall and retail vacancy rates in a particular town centre are traditionally regarded as a measure of the economic health of the location and a contributory factor in the levels of rents paid for retail units in the location. Any changes in footfall or vacancy rates can have a knock on effect to rental values.

It is generally acknowledged that footfall is a strong indicator of a location's trading performance, and this has been corroborated by the private sector identifying that town centres, with higher footfall volumes, generate a greater level of spend.

This often translates into the levels of rents that are paid for retail outlets, and aids in comparison between streets in a town/city centre, within streets and between town centres.

As the Rateable Values determined by the VOA have a direct relationship with the rental value of premises, as at a defined date, it follows that footfall can have a direct comparative relationship between Rateable Values.

The VOA needs to acquire suitable footfall data to assist in the preparation of Rateable Values for the 2026 Rating Lists.

The dataset that the VOA requires is as follows:

• The data should separately cover and identify 100+ town / city centres in England and Wales. For city centres and larger town centres it should be broken down to separately provide data for identified main shopping streets. It would be an advantage if "landmark" shopping streets, such as Oxford Street in London were further broken down into defined geographical sectors.
• Initially the data should cover the period from 1st April 2024 to 1st April 2027 and be supplied on an ongoing quarterly basis from the beginning of the contract.
• For each centre/street it must provide:
• Weekly average footfall by month;
• Data to be provided as volumes and year-on-year percentage change;
• Data to be provided in Excel spreadsheet format;
• There needs to be no restriction against the VOA downloading the data provided, storing it on our own systems and quoting the data at a later date.
• Each quarterly Footfall report must:
• Detail approach and methodology adopted;