Dear Ms Davis

Re: - Request for Information - Empty Commercial Properties

Thank you for your request for information, which was received by Manchester City Council on 9 July 2010 and has been considered under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I apologise for the delay in responding to your request.

You have requested the following information:

The information held by Manchester City Council in respect of empty commercial properties falling within the boundaries of the City of Manchester with a Rateable Value greater than £50,000, information to include:

The Council does hold some information in respect of vacant commercial properties falling within the boundaries of the City of Manchester. However, I regret that the information is not currently held in a form that would allow the Council to respond to your precise request. Whilst we are mindful of our duty to provide advice and assistance to those making requests for information, we do not consider it is our duty to create information for the purpose of responding to requests. In order to produce the information that you have requested we would need to `retrieve' or `extract' it in some way from our systems. We estimate that to do so would take us well in excess of the statutory cost limit in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 of £450 (which is calculated as being approximately 2.5 days of a council officer's time to determine whether the Council holds the information, locate, retrieve and extract the information) will be exceeded if the Council supplied the requested information to you.

Just to explain a little further, the Council's Business Rates Unit does hold information that has been supplied by parties seeking to obtain empty property business rates relief. These parties include both organisations and individuals. In order to comply with your request each record that the Council's Business Rates Unit holds in respect of an application for empty property business rates relief would first have to be checked in order to ensure that no personal data (as defined at section (1) (1) of the Data Protection Act 1998) will be revealed. Any personal data that is held by the Council's Business Rates Unit in relation to an application for empty property business rates relief will be subject to the Data Protection Act 1998 and the exemption at section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act in respect of Data Protection will therefore apply. II am advised by the Council's Business Rates Unit that the process of sifting personal data from non-personal data in their empty property business rates relief files would exceed the £450 cost limit.

If you require more information about the Council's Fees & Charges Policy, this may be downloaded from http://www.manchester.gov.uk/freedom/request/. If you do not have internet access and require a paper copy, please let me know.

The FOI Act does not oblige us to comply with requests that exceed this amount and therefore I am not able to comply with your current request.

With regard to the information supplied by organisations to the Council's Business Rates Unit in connection with an application for empty property business rates relief, the Council considers that when this information was supplied to the Council's Business Rates Unit it was submitted in confidence for the purposes of the application for empty property business rates relief and not for any other purposes. Consequently, the Council takes the view that even if it were possible to extract the requested information in respect of organisations from the information in respect of private individuals, this information is exempt under Section 41 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it was obtained by the Council from the applicants in confidence and disclosure would constitute an actionable breach of confidence. It seems to us that the information fulfils the test of having the necessary quality of confidence, and that disclosure would be an unauthorised use of that information. In terms of counterbalancing public interest in disclosure, whilst there may be a public interest in people knowing in general terms about the number of applications for empty property business rates relief, it seems to the Council that there is less public interest in people knowing the details of applicants for empty property business rates relief and the precise addresses of the properties concerned.

Please note if you are not satisfied with this response you may ask for an internal review. If you wish to complain you should contact me in the first instance. If you require more information about the Council's access to information complaints procedure this is available at section 25 of the Council's Code of Practice which can be downloaded from:

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/freedom/request/.

If you do not have internet access and require a paper copy, please let me know.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision.

The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 01625 545700

Fax: 01625 524510

http://www.ico.gov.uk/

If you have any queries about this letter please contact me. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

Yours sincerely

Paul Byrne

Business Rates Manager

Business Rates Section

PO Box 466

Town Hall

Manchester M16 6AT