Dear Sir or Madam,

1 In each of the last 5 years please provide the number of people
on the housing list waiting to be housed in public housing in
Birmingham. Please give the numbers for each racial groups such as
Pakistanis and so on.

2 In each of the last 5 years please give the number of people who
have been housed in public housing in Birmingham. Please give the
numbers for each racial groups such as Pakistanis and so on.

3 In each of the last 5 years please give in Birmingham the number
of people who have been housed in public housing, where the house
is smaller than that required by the number of people in the
family. Please give the numbers for each racial groups such as
Pakistanis and so on.

4 Please give the number of people who have been on public housing
waiting list for over 3 years in Birmingham. Please give the
numbers for each racial groups such as Pakistanis and so.

5 In each of the last 5 years, please give the number of people who
have been refused public housing in Birmingham. Please give the
numbers for each racial groups such as Pakistanis and so on.

6 In each of the last 5 years please name all organisations to whom
Birmingham City Council housing services have outsourced any
services and please name each service and please give the amount of
money each outsourced service involves and please give the number
of people serviced by each of the outsourced service and please
give the numbers people services for each racial groups such as
Pakistanis and so on.

7 Please provide a copy of the self assessment report Birmingham
City Council has prepared for the external housing inspection team
who are in the process of inspection of Birmingham City Council
housing services. I would like to see to what extent the self
assessment report comply with Birmingham City Council housing
statutory race equality public duty.

8 Please provide the contact details of the external housing
inspectors who are in the process of undertaking inspection of
Birmingham City Council housing services so that I can contact them
regarding their statutory race equality public duty under the Race
Relations Act in their capacity as inspectorate of Birmingham City
Council housing.

Yours faithfully,

Luqman Khan

Dear Luqman Khan,

Freedom of Information Act 2000 *** Request for Information

Thank you for your request for information held by the Council under the
provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

In some circumstances a fee may be payable and if that is the case, we
will let you know. A fees notice will be issued to you, and you will be
required to pay before we will proceed to deal with your request.

If you require any further information or are not happy with our response
please do not hesitate to contact a member of our team on 0121 303 4428
quoting the reference number above in any future communications.

Yours sincerely

Donna Walton
Information Governance Manager

Data Protection Act 1998
The information you have provided within your Freedom of Information
request will be held on our database and may also be held within manual
records for a period of 2 years from the date Birmingham City Council
received your request. Any personal data that you provide to Birmingham
City Council will be held in line with the requirements set out within the
Data Protection Act 1998.

Re Use of Public Sector Information
Where Birmingham City Council is the copyright holder of any information
that may be released, re-use for personal, educational or non-commercial
purposes is permitted without further reference to the City Council. Where
the re-use is for other purposes, such as commercial re-use, the applicant
should notify the City Council in writing to seek approval or agree terms
for re-use.

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Dear Luqman Khan,

Freedom of Information Act 2000 *** Request for Information

I am writing regarding you request for information. I can confirm that
the department holds information that falls within the description
specified in your request. However, Birmingham City Council has estimated
that it will cost more than the appropriate limit to consider your
request.

The appropriate limit specified in the regulations is **450.00. This
represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in
determining whether the department holds the information, and locating,
retrieving and extracting the information. Consequently, the Council is
not obliged by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to respond to your
request see section 12(1).

However, we are still happy to do so if you pay the fee as set out in this
notice, the estimated cost of processing your request is (**2500 which
equates to 100 hours worth of work). This charge has been calculated in
accordance with section 13 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the
Freedom of Information Fees Regulations.

The Council will be unable to continue processing your request until the
fee is paid. If you wish the Council to continue to deal with your request
you should pay the fee requested within 3 calendar months (18th March
2010). If the Council does not receive payment of the fee by this date, I
shall take it that your do not wish to pursue this request and will
consider the request closed

If you narrow the scope of your request, the Council may be able to
provide the information free of charge because it would cost less than the
appropriate limit to do so. Please see your requests below together with
our comments and queries we require an answer to in order for us to be
able to respond to your request. Any reformulated request the department
receives from you will be treated as a fresh FOI request.
General note *** throughout your request you are requesting ethnic
information about people. When letting properties we let to households.
Ethnicity will not always be the same across a household so taking a
household representative ethnicity will effect the outcome of the data.
Therefore, we would have to provide person ethnicity counts / data. This
will mean that there will be more than one ethnicity count per letting /
household group and will make adding the data up / or proportioning it
very difficult for you. Additionally we can only provide information
about council housing, not Housing Association properties.
1. In each of the last 5 years please provide the number of people
on the housing list waiting to be housed in public housing in
Birmingham. Please give the numbers for each racial groups
such as Pakistanis and so on.

This will take approximately 7 hours. For extra information
regarding this question:

a) Our computerised system - Northgate only holds
information from January 2005. 5 years worth of data will only be held
from end of January 2010 onwards
b) Not all of the applicants will have ethnicity data
c) We only hold ethnicity data and not racial data
d) We are unable to answer this as we only keep the tenants
current ethnicity.
e) We do not keep records after a person has left the
waiting list.
f) I am assuming the FOIer is asking for people not
households as ethnicity can vary across households

2. In each of the last 5 years please give the number of people who
have been housed in public housing in Birmingham. Please give the
numbers for each racial groups such as Pakistanis and so on.

This will take approximately 5 hours to collate however you are
advised that not all people will have ethnicity data recorded.

3. In each of the last 5 years please give in Birmingham the number
of people who have been housed in public housing, where the house
is smaller than that required by the number of people in the family.
Please give the numbers for each racial groups such as Pakistanis
and so on.

This will take approximately 60 + hours as it would involve
looking at family relations to establish what the bedroom standard is for
each household and until we have created a report with our IT
department, this may not be recorded. It would then entail Birmingham
City Council searching through our waiting lists to
compare family structures at the time of lettings to the property size
let. We would be looking at between 30,000 lettings and
at least 60,000 people.

4. Please give the number of people who have been on public housing
waiting list for over 3 years in Birmingham. Please give the
numbers for each racial groups such as Pakistanis and so.

This will take approximately 6 hours to collate.

5. In each of the last 5 years, please give the number of people
who have been refused public housing in Birmingham. Please give
the numbers for each racial groups such as Pakistanis and so on.

This will take approximately 6 hours to collate.

6. In each of the last 5 years please name all organisations to
whom Birmingham City Council housing services have
outsourced any services and please name each service and please give the
amount of money each outsourced service involves and
please give the number of people serviced by each of the outsourced
service and please give the numbers people services for
each racial groups such as Pakistanis and so on.

This will take approximately 10 hours to collate. We would be
able to provide details of payments to contractors for revenue repairs and
voids previously carried out in-house however we have not
identified other outsourced services in the Housing Revenue Account or
Housing General Fund.

7. Please provide a copy of the self assessment report Birmingham
City Council has prepared for the external housing
inspection team who are in the process of inspection of Birmingham City
Council housing services. I would like to see to what
extent the self assessment report comply with Birmingham City Council
housing statutory race equality public duty.

The Self Assessment report is still being developed and in
progress. A copy will be freely available upon completion together with
hyperlinked evidence on a cd-rom.

8. Please provide the contact details of the external housing
inspectors who are in the process of undertaking inspection of
Birmingham City Council housing services so that I can contact
them regarding their statutory race equality public duty under the
Race Relations Act in their capacity as inspectorate of Birmingham City
Council housing.

The Audit Commission select the Inspectors depending on the content of the
inspection they are currently auditing. It would therefore be preferable
if you contacted the Audit Commission directly on
www.audit-commission.gov.uk

Due to the content of your request Birmingham City Council have already
spent 6 hours on this request.
I would be grateful if you would forward a cheque or postal order in
pounds sterling made payable to ***Birmingham City Council***. Once the
fee has been paid a copy of the information will be despatched to you.
Please find enclosed a pre-paid envelope for your reply.

If you require any further information or are not happy with our response
please do not hesitate to contact me on 0121 303 4428.

Yours sincerely

Donna Walton
Information Governance Manager

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Dear Birmingham City Council,

1) I am not happy with Birmingham City Council (BCC) response dated
18 December 2009 to my Freedom of Information (FOI) request dated 2
December 2009.

2) BCC response is inadequate and it demonstrates BCC lack of
helpfulness and lack of co-operation and lack of compliance with
the spirit and substance of the Freedom of Information Act.

3) BCC response also clearly demonstrates that BCC is not complying
with the statutory Public Duty in the Race Relations Act.

4) The statutory Public Duty in the Race Relations Act not only
requires the public authorities to collect and monitor the level
and quality of services provided to the different racial groups but
the Public Duty also requires the public authorities to place and
publish all that information where the public can easily access all
the information.

5) All the Information I have requested should already be available
and easily accessible to the public under the statutory Public Duty
in the Race Relations Act. There is no question of anyone been
asked to pay for it.

6) All the information I request in my FOI request dated 2 December
2009 is within the scope of the statutory Public Duty in the Race
Relations Act. The law requires BCC to make it available and easily
accessible free of charge.

7) Please name each of the service the Housing Services provide
that do not record the ethnicity of the Service Users and please
give details to explain how each of these services ensure that all
racial groups are equally included to take up the services and to
ensure that no racial group disproportionately miss out on each
service.

8) Please provide me all the ethnicity information for any number
of services and for any number of years without BCC requiring me to
pay for it.

9) Please name each service for which BCC continues to want me to
pay for the information before BCC will provide it. Also confirm
that the BCC have already got all the ethnicity information I have
request but will only provide it after I pay for it.

10) Please provide the exact details of the place on BCC website
and the postal address of where I can access all the information I
requested in my FOI on 29 November 2009.

11) Please Note that the Leader of the Council and the Chief
Executive of BCC have recently made much of the fact that for cost
saving reasons members of the public would not get the papers on
the meeting Agenda because they can get them from BCC website when
they attend any council Wards, Constituencies, Cabinet and full
Council meetings. So at least all the information I have request
should be available of BCC Website But I can't find it because I
believe it is not there.

12) Please explain why BCC failed to take into consideration all of
the above before responding on 18 December 2009 to my FOI request
and demanding payment of £2500 from me. Senior managers and Senior
Councillors should be held accountable for their contempt for the
Freedom of Information Act and for their contempt for the Race
Relations Act

13) Please do not give me any more run around. Just treat the law
with the respect that it deserves.

Yours faithfully,

Luqman Khan