Surveyors have urged the Chancellor to use Wednesday’s Budget to set out how any new property tax measures would be administered, warning that proposals such as a mansion tax cannot be implemented effectively without a realistic plan for valuing homes.

Ryan Mathews (main picture, inset), managing director of the surveying division at LRG, said the sector was watching closely as speculation around wealth and property taxation intensified.

While most debate had focused on potential tax rises, he said that “there’s been little discussion about how proposed policies would actually work in practice, particularly when it comes to property valuation”.

Mathews said any measures targeting higher-value homes must be underpinned by a credible valuation process.

MAKING IT WORK

He said: “If the government is serious about introducing mansion taxes or levies on higher-value properties, it needs to answer some fundamental questions about how this would work.

“How will properties be valued? Council tax assessments haven’t been updated in many areas for decades, so they can’t be relied upon for accurate current valuations.”

He also warned that professional valuations cannot be replicated quickly or cheaply at the scale required for nationwide tax reforms.

TIME, EXPERTISE AND MONEY

“From a surveying standpoint, we conduct Red Book valuations regularly, and the reality is that proper property assessment takes time, expertise and money,” he said.

“You simply cannot replicate that level of detail across every property in the country without enormous costs and delays.”

Mathews said the government must be “realistic about what’s administratively feasible” and ensure that policy design reflects how the valuation system operates in practice.

“These aren’t minor technical details; they go to the heart of whether such policies can work in practice without creating chaos and uncertainty for homeowners,” he said.