Mr Gavin Chait
PAUL JOHNSON
WHAT DO THEY KNOW?
DIRECTOR OF RESOURCES &
DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Resources Directorate
Corporate Performance, Policy and Information
Council House
Manor Square,
Solihull West Midlands B91 3QB
Minicom: 0121-704-8058
Tel: 0121 704 6241
www.solihull.gov.uk
Our Ref: 1387596
Please ask for: Carol Donovan
Date: 18 April 2016
Dear Mr Chait
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FoIA)
This request has been handled under the above legislation, please accept
our apologies for the slight delay and find our response below. You asked:
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 Code
- 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)
I am aware that you already do provide listings of some business rates
data (such as credit balances, or those receiving rates relief) but the
existing data does not state whether properties are occupied or vacant
(whether relief is received or not). It is also critical that the Billing Authority
Code be provided for each property otherwise I am unable to reconcile
your data with the Valuations Office master list.
Under Section 21 FoIA we are not required to provide information in
response to a request, if it is already reasonably accessible to you. The
majority of the information (including the Billing Authority code [or
property reference number]) is published quarterly and is already available
on our website using the following link:
http://www.solihull.gov.uk/About-the-Council/Statistics-
data/openddataandpublicationscheme/whatwespendandhowwespendit/NN
DRdata
We would recommend bookmarking this link, as it will be used to publish
future data sets. We have been advised that the latest data (up to 31st
March 2016) will be published within the next seven days.
However, in respect of the actual annual rates charged, the information is
not held in a format that can be reported on, as you required. The service
area has advised that to identify, locate and extract the information, this
would involve manual interrogation of approximately 3968 accounts and
estimate that this would take (on average) two minutes per account or 132
hours, at a cost of £3300 (based upon an hourly rate of £25).
Under Section 12(1) FoIA, if the cost exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’ then
the public authority can refuse to fulfill the request: for Local Authorities
this limit set at £450 (which equates to 18 hours). Therefore, this
response acts as a refusal notice under Section 17 FoIA.
We trust this information is of assistance. However, if you wish to request a
review of our decision or make a complaint about how your request has
been handled you should write to the following address or reply to the
email to which this letter is attached:
Corporate Information Governance Manager
Resources Directorate
Corporate Performance, Policy and Information
Council House, Manor Square
Solihull, West Midlands
B91 3QB
Your request for an internal review should be submitted to us within 40
days of receipt by you of this response. Any requests received after this
time will be considered at the discretion of the Corporate Information
Governance Manager.
If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right of
appeal to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for a decision.
Generally, the ICO will not make a decision until you have exhausted the
complaints 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. Telephone:
0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 (national rate). Website:
www.ico.gov.uk.
We will now close your request as of this date.
Yours sincerely,
Carol Donovan
Corporate Information Governance Officer
Corporate Performance, Policy and Information