To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government by what means the Valuation Office Agency assesses whether a domestic property has an outbuilding for the purposes of its maintenance of council tax valuation lists; and by what means it did so during the Welsh council tax revaluation. (111977)

Whether a property has an outbuilding, or any other property attribute, was initially gathered from the Valuation Office Agency’s paper-based records as they were digitised. This information will continue to be collected, as circumstances allow, for new or altered properties as part of the on-going statutory responsibility to maintain current council tax valuation lists. For the Welsh council tax revaluation, property attribute data had not been digitised, and paper-based records were relied upon.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the answer of 6 December 2006, Official Report, column 474W, on the Valuation Office Agency, how many domestic properties in the local authority area of (a) Epping Forest district council and (b) Brentwood borough council are classified with a dwelling house code of FC. (111983)

As at 3 January 2007 there were (a) 359 and (b) 574 domestic properties classified with a dwelling house code of FC in (a) Epping Forest district council and (b) Brentwood borough council.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the answer of 6 December 2006, Official Report, column 475W, on the Valuation Office Agency, how many domestic dwellings in England are recorded by the Valuation Office Agency as having the property attribute of having (a) one bathroom and (b) more than one bathroom. (111984)

As at 3 January 2007, of the 21,849,763 dwellings in England the Valuation Office Agency has recorded (a) 19,426,111 with one bathroom and (b) 2,321,927 with two or more bathrooms. The records will, correctly, not show an entry under number of bathrooms in either of these headings in such cases as unmodernised properties where there is no separate bathroom or where facilities are shared amongst occupiers (e.g. certain types of bedsit)