Building Regulations Part F Commissioning Notices

The request was refused by Maidstone Borough Council.

Dear Maidstone Borough Council,
Please provide the following data regarding compliance with Part F of the Building Regulations for works overseen by your Building Control Body within the last 12 months:

1) total number of domestic properties for which building regulations approval was sought

2) the number of these which included installation of a mechanical ventilation system within the meaning of Part F

3) of this number, the number which
a) included the Commissioning Notice required in Part F section 4.42 "Air flow rate testing and commissioning of ventilation systems"
b) included a flow rate test

Yours faithfully,

Mark Corti

Complaints & FOI (MBC), Maidstone Borough Council

Dear Mark Corti

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

Ref: FOI 7748

Thank you for your request for information. We will have a response ready
for you within 20 working days of the date you made your request.

After considering your request, we may decide to refuse to supply the
information under a number of exemptions that exist in legislation. For
details of these exemptions, please visit the Information Commissioner’s
website:
[1]https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gui...

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me.  Please
remember to quote the reference above in any future communications.

Yours sincerely

FOI Team

Policy and Information Team

Maidstone Borough Council, Maidstone House, King Street, Maidstone, Kent

ME15 6JQ

t 01622 602640 w [2]www.maidstone.gov.uk

show quoted sections

Complaints & FOI (MBC), Maidstone Borough Council

Date: 24/01/2019

Ref: FOI 7748

Dear Mark Corti

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

You wrote to us requesting information on compliance with Part F on
Building Regulation applications.

I am writing to advise you that following a search of our paper and
electronic records, I have established that the information you requested
is not held by this Council.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please
remember to quote the reference above in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your
request and wish to request a review of our decision, please respond to
this email and I will pass it on to Mid Kent Legal Services to conduct a
review. Please ensure you outline your reasons for requesting a review.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the
ICO cannot make a decision unless 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.

Yours sincerely

FOI Team

Policy and Information

Maidstone Borough Council, Maidstone House King Street, Maidstone, Kent
ME15 6JQ

t []01622 602640 w [1]www.maidstone.gov.uk

To access our digital services please visit www.maidstone.gov.uk/service
Sign up to receive your Council Tax bill by email http://www.maidstone.gov.uk/emailbilling

We understand the importance of ensuring that personal data, including sensitive personal data is always treated lawfully and appropriately and that the rights of individuals are upheld.

We are required to collect, use and hold personal data about individuals. Data is required for the purposes of carrying out our statutory obligations, delivering services and meeting the needs of individuals that we deal with. This includes current, past and prospective employees, service users, members of the public, Members of the Council, our business partners and other local authorities or public bodies.

To view our full statement to see how your data will be stored and processed please visit https://maidstone.gov.uk/dataprotection

This email is confidential. If you receive it by mistake, please advise the sender by email immediately.
Any unauthorised use of the message or attachments is prohibited. Unless stated otherwise, any opinions are personal and cannot be attributed to Maidstone Borough Council.
Unless a purchase order is attached this email is not a contract or an order.
It is your responsibility to carry out Virus checks before opening any attachments.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.maidstone.gov.uk/

Dear Complaints & FOI (MBC),
Thank you for your prompt response.

I'm unclear how the information requested is not held by the council, and wondered if you could clarify.

You do appear to offer building regulations approval (http://www.maidstone.gov.uk/home/primary...), and I would therefore expect you to have records relating to them. This would, I imagine, include information as to whether the property was residential or commercial; what work was being done; and evidence pertaining to issuance of building regulations approval.
If not, I'd appreciate some guidance as to where this information would be held, and by whom.

Many thanks again,

Yours sincerely,

Mark Corti

Ann Thatcher, Maidstone Borough Council

1 Attachment

Hi Mark

We can only supply total number of domestic properties for which building regulations approval was sought.

But the other items are not registered on our system specifically for the Part F compliance so we would have to open every application to review each file

Please find attached a report reflecting all completed Building Regulation applications for 2018.

show quoted sections

Dear Ann,
Many thanks for this. I understand that you do hold the information, but that it would be too onerous / expensive to collate it into a usable form.

Thanks for your time, and your responses.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Corti

Complaints & FOI (MBC), Maidstone Borough Council

Date: 31/01/2019

Ref:   FOI 7748

Dear Mark Corti

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

You recently wrote to us requesting information on compliance with Part F
of the Building Regulations for works overseen by your Building Control
Body within the last 12 months. We are very sorry for incorrectly stating
in our original response that we do not hold this information.

This information is held, however it is exempt under Section 12 of the
Act. Under Section 12, I am not required to provide information if it
would exceed the appropriate cost limit, which for local government is set
at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5
working days in determining whether the department holds the information,
locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

We estimate that it will take us approximately 60 hours, or 8 working
days, to determine appropriate material and locate, retrieve and extract
the information in reference to compliance with Part F of the Building
Regulations. We estimate that it would take approximately 30 hours to
collate all of the relevant files as they are currently stored in
different locations. Additionally, there would be an extra cost to recall
those files which are stored in archive. In total we have identified 911
files and each would take on average two minutes to look through and
extract the relevant information which equates to approximately 30 hours
of work. Therefore, your request will not be processed further.

Unfortunately, we believe that even a reduced scope of this request may
still exceed the time/cost limit due to the time required to gather the
information, and extract it. However, we are happy to consider any
requests with a reduced timescale.

 

You may wish to refine your request by narrowing its scope by being more
specific about what information you particularly wish to obtain, including
any dates or period of time relevant to the information required.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please
remember to quote the reference above in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your
request and wish to request a review of our decision, please respond to
this email and I will pass it on to Mid Kent Legal Services to conduct a
review. Please ensure you outline your reasons for requesting a review.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the
ICO cannot make a decision unless 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.

Yours sincerely

FOI Team

Policy and Information

Maidstone Borough Council, Maidstone House King Street, Maidstone, Kent
ME15 6JQ

t []01622 602640 w [1]www.maidstone.gov.uk

To access our digital services please visit www.maidstone.gov.uk/service
Sign up to receive your Council Tax bill by email http://www.maidstone.gov.uk/emailbilling

We understand the importance of ensuring that personal data, including sensitive personal data is always treated lawfully and appropriately and that the rights of individuals are upheld.

We are required to collect, use and hold personal data about individuals. Data is required for the purposes of carrying out our statutory obligations, delivering services and meeting the needs of individuals that we deal with. This includes current, past and prospective employees, service users, members of the public, Members of the Council, our business partners and other local authorities or public bodies.

To view our full statement to see how your data will be stored and processed please visit https://maidstone.gov.uk/dataprotection

This email is confidential. If you receive it by mistake, please advise the sender by email immediately.
Any unauthorised use of the message or attachments is prohibited. Unless stated otherwise, any opinions are personal and cannot be attributed to Maidstone Borough Council.
Unless a purchase order is attached this email is not a contract or an order.
It is your responsibility to carry out Virus checks before opening any attachments.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.maidstone.gov.uk/