Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data (Q4 2019)

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Darlington Borough Council should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Darlington Borough Council,

In terms of the Freedom of Information Act of 2000, and subject to section 40(2) on personal data, could you please provide me with a complete and up-to-date list of all business (non-residential) property rates data for your local authority, and including the following fields:

- Billing Authority Property Reference Code (linking the property to the VOA database reference)
- Firm's Trading Name (i.e. property occupant)
- Full Property Address (Number, Street, Postal Code, Town)
- Occupied / Vacant
- Date of Occupation / Vacancy
- Actual annual rates charged (in Pounds)

If you are unable to provide an absolute “Occupation / Vacancy” status, please provide the Exemptions and / or Reliefs that a particular property may be receiving.

Please provide these data as machine-readable as either a CSV or Microsoft Excel file, capable of re-use, and under terms of the Open Government Licence (meaning reuse for any and all purposes, including commercial).

I last requested this data three months ago, and this is a request for an updated and current dataset.

I'm sure you get many requests for business rates and responding and managing these FOIs must be costly for you. Could I request that - as 71% of local authorities now do - you update and release this dataset via a dedicated page on your local authority website or on an open data service. I can recommend approaches for you to consider, and you should find that this reduces the time and cost of this request process.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Chait

Darlington Borough Council

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Dear Mr Chait

 

Thank you for your request for information, received 23rd January 2020. 

 

We are processing your request in accordance with our Freedom of
Information and Environmental Information Request Procedure, which you can
find on our [2]website.

 

If we need more information in order to process your request, we will
contact you in due course.

 

You can expect a full response to your request within 20 working days.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Rachel Seddon

Complaints & Information Governance Assistant

(01325) 406777

 

 

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References

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2. https://www.darlington.gov.uk/your-counc...

Darlington Borough Council

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Dear Mr Chait

 

Request reference: DBC-3986-19

Please find attached the Council's response to your recent request for
information.  

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Rachel Seddon

Complaints & Information Governance Assistant

(01325) 406777

 

 

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Dear Darlington Borough Council,

Thanks for your response.

In previous requests (cf https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/darl...) you have provided a "Current rateable value" field and that, along with the remaining fields related to exemptions and reliefs, will be fine.

Please could you release the data in the same way you have previously?

Plus, this is a regular quarterly request. Most local authorities now simply publish these data to a persistent URL on their open data or council websites. (I think only about 40 or so still require FOIs). It would be great if you could update and publish this dataset directly.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Chait

Complaints, Darlington Borough Council

This document was classified as: OFFICIAL

Dear Mr Chait,

Thank you for getting back to us.

Looking on whatdotheyknow.com we have rejected your last requests on cost because of actual annual rates, you have then refined your request, where you did this we were then able to provide you with the information. Going forward if you were to submit your request without the actual annual rate question it is likely that we will be able to provide the information.

Kind regards,

Richie Sanderson
Complaints & Information Governance Assistant
(01325) 406777

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