SHEPHERD Chartered Surveyors has appointed a new head of rating just weeks before the 2017 revaluation of Scottish business rates takes effect.

Andy Boal, who has focused on valuation and rating in his 30-plus year career in the commercial property sector, will head the firm’s team of ratings experts from its base in Dundee.

Mr Boal began his career with the Grampian Assessor in the early 1980s. He left to join a private surveying firm in Aberdeen before moving to Glasgow in 1997 and then to Dundee where, in 2004, he set up an office for Ryden. He said: “I’m delighted to join Shepherd at a time when the Revaluation continues to be a hot topic.”