Checking in on Check Challenge Appeal

Unlike most agents MUA has not been waiting for the roll out of the automated Check Challenge Appeal system that the VOA has been vaguely promising. Most of our clients have now registered and claimed their sites and we have had some experience of the VOA’s system for handling Checks and Challenges.

Our verdict is that it is not fit for purpose.

Currently out of the 1.8 million assessments roughly 130,000 have been claimed by their rate payers. If VOA ascending reference numbers are anything to go by, fewer than 3500 have had checks made on them. Over 300 of these have been made by MUA. So we are currently responsible for ~10% of all checks.

We have had to chase around 30 of these for acknowledgement and in several cases the VOA has claimed not to have received them (in all cases we have an autoreply showing that they have). As there are such restrictive deadlines imposed on the rate payer or their agent it is extremely worrying to think that the VOA’s system has a 10% failure rate.

If the CCA Service department cannot cope properly with checks on 0.2% of assessments what is going to happen once other agents start submitting checks and challenges?