The report
What makes a report authentic
A valuation report is only worth something to a bank if a named, registered engineer has put their signature on it. Everything below exists to make that signature mean something.
- All sections complete
- Pre-authorisation checklist
- Engineer signs and stamps
- Firm’s second signature (some formats only)
- Report ready
- Final payment settled
- Delivered
- Verifiable by anyone
The client reads Under authorization across the two middle steps, which is why that status sometimes lasts longer than people expect.
The signature is a credential, not a job title
A Principal Engineer cannot sign until their council registration — number, category and expiry date — is recorded and signing is switched on for them. An administrator records that credential.
Nobody signs in an engineer’s place. If the assigned engineer is unavailable, the only route is to reassign the file to another engineer who holds a valid credential. There is no administrator override, because a signature is tied to a real person’s registration and an administrator has nothing to sign with.
The finished report prints the name, registration number and designation of whoever actually signed it — never a firm-wide constant.
Some formats need two signatures
Where a bank’s format declares two signature blocks, the file waits after the engineer’s signature for the firm’s signatory — a proprietor or managing director. Delivery stays blocked throughout, and the client’s status does not change.
Delivery
Two ways a report reaches the client:
- Download from the portal or the app.
- A recorded physical hand-over — who received it, their relationship to the client, the hand-over date in both calendars, an acknowledgement, and which copy of how many it was.
Neither is available while the final payment is outstanding. The report is shown locked, with the amount due.
Anyone can check it
Every issued report carries a QR code leading to a public verification page. No account, no login, no need to ring the consultancy. A bank officer with the paper in hand can confirm it in a few seconds on a phone.
The page shows the reference, the issuing firm and its registration number, the frozen issue date, the validity period, the service type, the status, a document code, a partly masked amount, and whether the report has been revised.
It shows nothing that identifies the client or the property. The amount is deliberately masked — the digit count is preserved with the first two and the last digit visible — so the page confirms a figure without becoming a way to look up strangers’ property values.
The real check is uploading the file: the server compares the document you were handed against the bytes it issued. There is no code to compare by eye, because the code is derived from the file’s exact contents.
Full detail for a reader holding a report: Verify a report.
After delivery
A delivered report is a permanent record. It is never edited in place. If something needs correcting, that goes through the review window, which produces a new version and marks the old one superseded — so anybody verifying the old copy is told there is a newer one rather than being quietly misled.
Last reviewed 2026-09-08.