Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data (Q3 2020)

The request was successful.

Dear Bromley 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 your local authority’s complete and most-recently updated list of all business (non-residential) property rates data, including the following fields:

- Billing Authority Property Reference Code (linking the property to the public VOA database reference)
- Firm's Trading Name (i.e. property occupant or ratepayer)
- Full Property Address (Number, Street, Postal Code, Town)
- Occupation / Vacancy status
- Date of Occupation / Vacancy
- Actual annual rates charged (in Pounds) and/or categories of reliefs/exemptions granted

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.

NOTE: While FOIs are meant to be requestor blind, these data are actively used by national government and UK universities to inform the economic response to COVID-19. Commercial ratepayer data are always of public interest but, in the midst of a global pandemic and its consequent devastating economic fallout, these data are vital to track business behaviour and guide government and enterprise adaptation to the social impact of COVID-19. Please publish quickly so that organisations trying to support your local authority can do so, and, if you have any difficulties, please contact me so that I may help.

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 (reuse for any and all purposes, including commercial).

I last requested these data three months ago, and this is a request for your latest updated dataset.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Chait

Business Rates, Bromley Borough Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Chait,

FOI 21926

Further to your recent FOI enquiry, please find the requested data attached.

We trust this completes your FOI enquiry which has now been closed.

Thank you for your enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Preston
Contract Monitoring Officer
Chief Executive’s Department
Civic Centre, Stockwell Close, Bromley BR1 3UH
www.bromley.gov.uk

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Please note:
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Sec (1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Sec (1)(b) is to disclose information which is permitted to the public domain and that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 of FOIA requires that we provide the requester with a notice which: a) states fact b) specifies exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why exemption applies.

Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of the Freedom of Information Act states that a public authority is not obliged to:…. “comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate time limit of 18 hours of an officers time to manually review records, retrieve and collate the data which we are not obliged to do under the act if to do so would exceed the 18 hour time limit.

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If you are not content with the outcome of our internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted on 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545 745.
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