Details of empty commercial properties with a rateable value between £18,000 & £20,000.

Dear Ms Davies

Please accept my apologies for the delay in this reply

Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of
information Act 2000, where you requested the following information:

(a) addresses and rateable values of empty Commercial properties

with a current rateable value between £18,000 and £20,000 that are

within Bradford City Council area; and

(b) the names and addresses of the owners of those properties

referred to in (a)

I can confirm that the council does hold information relevant to your
request on a database for the purpose of the billing and collection of Non
Domestic Rates, however I consider that this information is exempt from
disclosure under sections 40(2) and 41 of the act.

Some of the information which you have requested is personal data, this
being the name of the owner. Any personal data that is held in relation to
an application for empty property business rate 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 apply.

I accept that some owners will not be individuals; however I am unable to
extract this specific data from our computer system. Whilst I am 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 purposes of responding to requests.

Information provided to the Council*s Business Rates department from
external organisations in connection with their application for empty
business rates relief is considered to have been provided in confidence
and only for the purposes of their application. In our view if we put this
information into the public domain that would go well beyond their
reasonable expectations about what we would use this information for.
Therefore any information that could be extracted would be exempt under
Section 41 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it was obtained by
the Council from the applicants in confidence and its 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 disclosure would be an unauthorised
used of that information. In terms of the public interest in disclosure,
there may be a public interest in general terms about the number of
applications for empty property business rate relief, however we believe
there is less public interest in people knowing the details of specific
applicants and addresses of the properties concerned.

If you are not satisfied with this reply you may ask for a review of this
decision by contacting [1][Bradford City Council request email] or by writing to Freedom of
Information, 4^th Floor, Jacobs Well, Bradford BD1 5RW.

If you are still not satisfied with the outcome of the internal review you
have the right of appeal to the Information Commissioner who can be
contacted at:

Information Commissioner*s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 01625 545700

URL: [2]http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

Elizabeth Lavan
Assistant Revenues Manager(Business Rates)
Revenues & Benefits

Department of Corporate Services
lBusiness Transformation lRevenues & Benefits lFinance lHuman Resources
lLegal & Democratic

Tel: 01274 437862
Fax: 01274 736529

City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Britannia House, Hall
Ings, Bradford BD1 1HX

e-mail: [3][email address]
Visit our website at [4]www.bradford.gov.uk

References

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