Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data (Section 31)

The request was refused by Greenwich Borough Council.

Dear Greenwich Borough Council,

In terms of the Freedom of Information Act of 2000, and subject to section 40(2) on excluding 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 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.

We recognise that you ordinarily refuse to release these data in terms of Regulation 31(1)(a). In November 2016, we appealed this class of refusal - specifically as it relates to this request - to the Information Commissioner’s Office and they issued a Decision Notice (FS50628943 - https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-tak..., and FS50628978 - https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-tak...) on 28 February 2017 finding that “it is not correct to withhold this information under Regulation 31(1)(a)”, and that “the public interest in the information being disclosed outweighs that in the exemption being maintained”.

Note that these Decision Notices supersede Voyias v Information Commissioner and London Borough of Camden Council (EA/2011/0007) and Decision Notice FS50538789 (related to Stoke on Trent Council).

Please provide this as machine-readable as either a CSV or Microsoft Excel file, capable of re-use, and under terms of the Open Government Licence.

I'm sure you get many requests for business rates and we intend to update this national series every three months. Could we request that - as more than 30% of local authorities already do - you update and release this dataset via a dedicated page on your local authority website or on an open data service. You should find that this reduces the time and cost of this request process.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Chait

foi, Greenwich Borough Council

Dear Mr Chait

Freedom of Information/Environmental Information Regulations request: FOI-4535

Thank you for your request dated 30 March 2017

Your request will be answered by 02 May 2017

If you have any queries about this request, please contact me, quoting the reference number above.

Yours sincerely,

Jackie Jago
Head of Corporate Services
Corporate Services
Directorate of Central Services
Royal Borough of Greenwich

020 8921 5044
 Room 20 Basement The Town Hall, Wellington Street, London SE18 6PW
www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk

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foi, Greenwich Borough Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Chait

Freedom of Information/Environmental Information Regulations request: FOI-4535

Thank you for your request dated 30 March 2017

Our response is as follows:

The information you have requested with regard to all commercial properties within the billing authority is disclosed in the attached list.

You will note that we are withholding the information for individual owner/occupiers because this is personal data in accordance with section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under the Act disclosure of this information would breach the fair processing principle contained in the Data Protection Act (DPA), where it would be unfair to those individuals if we released such information without their consent. Also there would be a reasonable expectation held by these individuals that the Council will keep this information confidential.

You will further note that I have not provided details of properties that are currently empty, as although the Council does hold this information, we continue to rely on Section 31(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act, information is exempt if its disclosure would, or would be likely to prejudice “The prevention or detection of crime”.

We consider that by placing this information into the public domain it is likely to increase the level of break-ins and metal thefts from empty commercial buildings in the Borough. This could also lead to an increase in criminal activity as well as endangering the safety of council tenants and residents who reside in neighbouring properties.

We have also withheld this information in accordance with section 38 (1)(a)(b) of the Act.

This information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to “Endanger the safety of any individual”.

There have been a number of incidents that have occurred as a result of break-ins to our vacant stock for metal thefts, which has caused over £70,000 worth of damage. In a recent case, the damage caused to one of our council properties resulted in flooding which resulted in a collapsed ceiling of the tenant’s flat below.

We consider that by placing a list of addresses of privately owned and council owned commercial buildings into the public domain there is a likelihood that the safety of our tenants and residents could be endangered. This is demonstrated by the case we have referred to in the paragraph above.

Both section 31(1)(a) and 38(1)(b) are qualified exemptions and we have considered the public interest test in accordance with section 2(1)(b) of the Act.

“In all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing whether the public authority holds the information”.

We have considered all the factors in favour of disclosure and they are:

Placing the requested information would assist the general public interest in openness, an important aspect of which includes increasing public debate concerning empty properties.

There is a public interest in public authorities being accountable and transparent. It would assist the general public in understanding how the Council uses its resources in relation to its Housing Stock.

The factors that weigh in favour of maintaining the exemption are:-

That disclosure of this information into the public domain could increase the likelihood of break-ins to the Council’s housing stock and other properties within the Borough.

If this happened, it is likely that the residents in close proximity to these empty non-commercial buildings could be under threat because a crime had been committed close to them. We expect residents to feel secure in their homes.

If you have any queries about this correspondence, please contact me, quoting the reference number above.

If you are not satisfied with our response to your request, you can ask for an Internal Review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of receipt of the response to your original request. If you wish to do this, please contact us, setting out why you are dissatisfied.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the Internal Review, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the Internal Review procedure provided by the Council. You can contact the ICO by emailing [email address], or by post at Customer Contact, Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely,

Jackie Jago
Head of Corporate Services
Corporate Services
Directorate of Central Services
Royal Borough of Greenwich

020 8921 5044
 Room 20 Basement The Town Hall, Wellington Street, London SE18 6PW
www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk

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Dear Greenwich Borough Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Greenwich Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data (Section 31)'.

On 30 March 2017, I sent an FOI request in terms of the Freedom of Information Act of 2000, and subject to section 40(2) on personal data, for 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 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)

My request has been refused in terms of Section 31(1)(a), Section 38(1)(b) and Section 41.

Section 31(1)(a) deals specifically with "the prevention or detection of crime".

In November 2016, I appealed this class of refusal - specifically as it relates to this request - to the Information Commissioner’s Office and they issued a Decision Notice (FS50628943 - https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-tak..., and FS50628978 - https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-tak...) on 28 February 2017 finding that “it is not correct to withhold this information under Regulation 31(1)(a)”, and that “the public interest in the information being disclosed outweighs that in the exemption being maintained”.

Since a Section 31(1)(a) refusal is not valid in terms of my request I will be referring this part of your refusal to ICO for adjudication. You could save us both time by acknowledging their Decision Notice.

Section 38(1)(b) deals specifically with "he safety of any individual” and I can only assume you're referring to those individuals who you claim will break into vacant commercial properties? In my original submission to ICO relating to the Section 31(1)(a) refusals I presented evidence that crime in vacant commercial property is exceedingly rare, and the health and safety issues would also - consequentially - be exceedingly rare.

As I stated at the time (November 2016):

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Over the past three months, we have placed FOI requests with all police services across England and Wales requesting total number of incidents of criminal activity in empty commercial properties.

Of the 350 local authorities in England and Wales, more than 66% of these either already make empty property data available, or have done so in response to FOI requests from ourselves. The combination of crime incident data and the list of local authorities would permit easy comparison between areas that regularly disclose and those which choose not to in order to assess whether there is a greater risk as a result of disclosure.

Out of 44 police services, only two are actually able to provide data on incidents in empty commercial properties. The remaining police services do not specifically collect such data and have no way of knowing what the incident rates are.

The two who have are Thames Valley Police and North Wales Police. If a relevant police authority is advising you on a Section 31(1)(a) exemption, then - unless they are either of these - they do not actually have data to validate their opinion.

The data provided are unequivocal. Incidents of crime in empty properties are exceedingly rare, and there is no variation in the incidence rate between local authorities who do publish, and those who do not publish data on empty properties.

In North Wales, there are an average of 1,780 crimes a year in occupied properties, and 26 crimes a year in unoccupied properties that largely have to do with theft, vandalism or arson (note that squatting in commercial property is not a crime and so unrecorded).

There are about 45,000 commercial properties in North Wales and vacancies are amongst the worst in England and Wales (ranging from 15% to 25%).

In other words, the ratio of crimes in occupied vs empty commercial properties is almost 70:1, compared with an actual occupied vs empty ratio of 6:1 (i.e. an occupied commercial property is ten times more likely to experience an incident of crime than an unoccupied one).

This tells us that crime in empty commercial premises is extremely rare, and explains why most police services do not bother to specifically collect such data.

The data from the Thames Valley police gives us a better idea of the variation between authorities which publish, and those which don’t.

For example, in 2015 Oxford had 4,038 commercial properties and suffered 2 cases of empty commercial property crime at a cost of £1,259. In comparison, they had 3,133 cases of crime committed in occupied business premises, at a cost of £507,956.

By comparison, Reading, with 5,659 commercial properties suffered 2 empty commercial property crimes that caused no damage at all.

Oxford refuses to publish under Section 31(1)(a) while Reading publishes regularly.

In total, across the Thames Valley, for 74,027 properties - of which about 7,000 are empty - only 11 crimes related to empty properties were recorded. Compare that to occupied and actively-traded properties which experienced 29,946 reported crimes.

The Thames Valley data are here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...
And the North Wales Police data are here:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...

Please verify for yourself.

In two distinct parts of the UK, with completely different approaches to recording crime, empty property crime is extremely rare, and publication of data listing empty properties does not have any impact on the number of incidents of crime.

Some local authorities who claim exemption under Section 31(1)(a) claim to have their own data to validate these claims. We have further sent FOIs requesting data to 64 local authorities (including both those who do publish empty property data, and those who do not). Not one has any data - other than very sparse anecdotal data to support their claim.
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According to the Information Commissioner's Office, "Section 41 applies to information that has been obtained from another person and whose disclosure to the public would constitute an actionable breach of confidence."

Please could you specify precisely which data you refuse to release, and under what terms you consider this to be in confidence (i.e. in what way are you bound by the non-commercial ratepayer to hold these data in confidence).

From my perspective, none of these data can be considered to be in confidence:

- Billing Authority Reference Code: already public, used by the Valuations Office to permit cross-referencing of their data to that of local authorities; it is already published in public;
- Firm’s Trading Name: already published via Companies House for all registered companies, and often published in advertising materials by businesses themselves;
- Full property address: already published by numerous agencies, including the VOA;
- State of Occupation: visible to anyone walking past the property, and collected manually by commercial services like Local Data Company; this is also advertised when properties are placed on the market (i.e. no tenant is affected if there is no tenant), or when existing tenants advertise their services;
- Date of Occupation / Vacancy: as with state of occupation;
- Actual annual rates charged: commercial data relevant to the operation of the local authority, and critical to understanding local authority revenue collection;

Simply be way of illustration, here are several links where entire business databases are publicly presented (i.e. openly accessible) which contain details of commercial business data, including addresses, names of tenants and from where dates of occupation are presented, or may be derived based on the date of such data being added or updated into these databases:

- Valuations Office Authority publishes a regularly-updated schedule of all ratepayers and valuations at https://voaratinglists.blob.core.windows... including addresses and billing-authority reference numbers. This also includes a data schedule which - while not complete - contains a significant proportion of names of ratepayers and dates of occupation;
- Yelp.com has an API for their database of businesses permitting complete access and interrogation of their comprehensive database of business information, available at https://www.yelp.com/developers;
- Companies House provides developer tools and search facilities on all company information in the UK, including address, company activity, and financial disclosure, https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about...
- And there are numerous other companies, such as Yell.com, 118118.com and so on which all provide aggregated data on businesses;

You do not state in your rejection what data in my request you regard as ‘in confidence’, and it is unclear how you have arrived at this conclusion.

The combination of these data permit us to reconcile your individual authority data with that of the Valuations Office and so create a single, unified database of commercial property vacancy across England and Wales, as well as the actual revenue raised from these commercial properties.

I should also note that, of the 349 local authorities in England and Wales, over 75% of these either already make these data available, or have done so in response to FOI requests from ourselves. Of those who have refused, only a handful have ever claimed that the data were collected ‘in confidence’.

I ask that you reconsider your decision and make this data available to us under terms which permit our use thereof.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/c...

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Chait

foi, Greenwich Borough Council

Dear Mr Chait,

Freedom of Information request: FOI/IR-4535

Thank you for your request for an Internal Review regarding our response to your Freedom of Information request.

Your request is being dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and will be answered within twenty working days.

If you have any queries, please contact me, quoting the reference number.

If you are not content with the outcome of the Internal Review, you can apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the Internal Review procedure provided by the Council. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely,

Jackie Jago
Head of Corporate Services
Corporate Services
Directorate of Central Services
Royal Borough of Greenwich

020 8921 5044
 Room 20 Basement The Town Hall, Wellington Street, London SE18 6PW
www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk

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foi, Greenwich Borough Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Chait,

Internal Review on Freedom of Information request: FOI/IR-4535

Thank you for your Internal Review request on the handling of your Freedom of Information request.

(Please see our above response provided as an attachment.)

If you have any queries, please contact me, quoting the reference number.

If you are not content with the outcome of the Internal Review, you can apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the Internal Review procedure provided by the Council. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely,

Jackie Jago
Head of Corporate Services
Corporate Services
Directorate of Central Services
Royal Borough of Greenwich

020 8921 5044
 Room 20 Basement The Town Hall, Wellington Street, London SE18 6PW
www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk

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