Data sharing gateway between Valuation Officers in the Valuation Office Agency of HM Revenue and Customs and the Northern Ireland Department of Finance (NIDOF)
To support their statutory functions of compiling rating lists and defending appeals, rating officials in Northern Ireland require information from the valuation officers in the VOA. This includes information such as receipts and expenditure data, leases or other information that may identify a ratepayer.
	The Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 (CRCA) includes a duty of confidentiality in section 18(1) which means that valuation officers cannot disclose any information unless there is a legal basis to do so, for instance, for the purposes of their functions or where there is a legislative gateway.
	While information which does not identify a person can be shared with valuation officials in Northern Ireland under section 74 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, this was not sufficient to support the data needed for Northern Ireland’s revaluation work and to defend against appeals. Absence of this information put local authorities in Northern Ireland at risk of potential revenue loss, due to the difficulty in defending valuations.
	Therefore, the government decided to include a specific data sharing gateway in this Act, to allow valuation information held by valuation officers of the VOA in England and Wales to be shared with their rating counterparts in Northern Ireland. This will allow them to use data from the VOA to discharge their statutory functions, and in turn provide more accurate valuations to Northern Ireland ratepayers.
	The gateway is one way and only allows data held by valuation officers in connection with their functions to be shared with Northern Ireland rating officials. The Act includes statutory protections against any wrongful disclosure of information.