Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data

The request was refused by Oxford City Council.

Dear Oxford City Council,

In terms of the Freedom of Information Act of 2000, 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.

I appreciate that properties owned / rented by individuals are personal information and such personal data (i.e. the Firm's Trading Name) would be excluded from my request in terms of Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In such cases, please provide the remaining information with the Firm's Trading Name either blank or listed as 'individual'.

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.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Chait

freedomofinformation@oxford.gov.uk, Oxford City Council

Dear Gavin,

Thank you for your email. I believe the information you require can be found on our website, here:

www.oxford.gov.uk/businessratesdata

As such, I consider that the exemption under Section 21 of The Freedom of Information Act 2000 - which provides for material that is reasonably accessible by other means - applies in this instance.

If you disagree with any part of the response to your request, you are entitled to ask the Council for an internal review of the decision(s) made. You may do this by writing to the Monitoring Officer, by either email – [email address] – or by post to Monitoring Officer, Oxford City Council, St Aldate’s Chambers, St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1DS. After the result of the internal review, if you remain dissatisfied, you may ask the Information Commissioner to intervene on your behalf. You may do this by writing to the Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely

Merilyn

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Dear Oxford City Council,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Oxford City Council's handling of my FOI request 'Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data'.

On 15 March 2016, I sent an FOI request for a complete and up-to-date list of all business (non-residential) property rates data, 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)

My request has been refused in terms of Section 31(a). According to the Information Commissioners Office, "Section 31 is a prejudice based exemption and is subject to the public interest test. This means that not only does the information have to prejudice one of the purposes listed, but, before the information can be withheld, the public interest in preventing that prejudice must outweigh the public interest in disclosure."

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

A property being empty may well lead to it being more likely to suffer potential criminal activity, but it does not automatically follow that publishing a list of empty properties in any way changes that potential.

The purpose of our use of the data requested is in informing entrepreneurs and business seekers about opportunities in empty premises when they are advertised for new tenants. We combine local authority premises occupation data with other data (from the Valuations Office and ONS) to develop forward guidance on business potential in each empty business property. Further details on our activities are available at http://pikhaya.com, but our activity is supported by the Open Data Institute and we have received funding from the EU Open Data Incubator to develop this service.

Our combined data are made available via online commercial property leasing intermediaries as a free service to business seekers. These leasing intermediaries combine our data with properties being offered for rent.

In other words, these are properties being clearly advertised as empty whether the local authority data are publicly available or not.

Of the 350 local authorities in England and Wales, over 150 of these either already make empty property data available, or have done so in response to FOI requests from ourselves.

We are mindful, though, that not all authorities wish to release direct information on empty premises. In that case, could we suggest that you provide only a list of occupied properties which we would then reconcile against the master list of properties from the Valuations Office Agency (VOA). VOA data are available via their website, and the complete database by subscription. Empty premises will be known to residents of the community in which they are based.That means that anyone not resident in your community and wanting to find the list of empty properties would have to undertake the costs and technicalities of a similar data reconciliation.

I would ask that you consider that the public interest in economic development and improving opportunities for independent businesses and entrepreneurs far outweighs any concern that the release of data which can identify empty business properties may cause crime.

Unemployment and economic deprivation are often key to reducing the potential for crime. Our intention is to support local economic development initiatives through the use of these data.

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

freedomofinformation@oxford.gov.uk, Oxford City Council

1 Attachment

  • Attachment

    RE Freedom of Information request Complete Non Residential Business Property Rates Data.txt

    4K Download View as HTML

Hello Gavin,

There appears to have been some mistake. In the response I just sent you, I applied section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act (email attached), not section 31. Section 21 does not require a public interest test to be carried out and it allows for information that is reasonably accessible by other means. As the information you require is added to our website on a quarterly basis, I am of the opinion it applies in this instance.

Best wishes

Merilyn

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Dear Merilyn,

The page you referred me to (https://www.oxford.gov.uk/businessratesd...), is quite clear: "Empty property within the city is not identified in the spread sheet. The exemption under Section 31 of the Freedom of Information Act, which relates to the prevention of crime, has been applied."

As such, I regard your response as a refusal under Section 31, by way of Section 21.

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Chait

freedomofinformation@oxford.gov.uk, Oxford City Council

Dear Gavin,

We do not provide details of empty properties in the City, as it is believed this may be used to facilitate criminal activity, hence the application of section 31.

As you are unhappy with this, I will forward it to our monitoring officer.

Best wishes

Merilyn

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SMITH Daniel, Oxford City Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Chait,

 

I have been delegated by the Council’s Monitoring Officer to carry out the
review you requested.

 

I will look into the background, consider the correspondence and documents
and contact you again when I have completed the review. I expect to be
able to do this within the next 14 days.

 

If there is any further information you would like me to take into account
as part of the review please forward it to me.

 

sincerely

 

 

Daniel Smith | Lawyer | Law & Governance | Oxford City Council | St.
Aldate’s Chambers | St Aldate's | Oxford OX1 1DS | DX 4309 Oxford 1 |
01865 252278

 

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Dear Daniel Smith,

Thank you for your response. And to add to my original request for review:

I have run - in parallel with this request - a series of FOI requests to a sample of local authorities and to all police services across England and Wales requesting total number of incidents of criminal activity in empty commercial properties. To date, no local authorities or police services have produced such data and it appears that no such data are collected. The only data (very sparsely collected) by local authorities about incidents of crime in council-owned commercial premises indicates that no such crime is recorded, even in local authorities where details of empty properties are regularly published.

It is very difficult to substantiate a Section 31 refusal if you have no data to validate your concern. Of the 350 local authorities in England and Wales, more than 50% of these either already make empty property data available, or have done so in response to FOI requests from ourselves.

In other words, I do not believe there is any substantive basis for concern that publishing a list of empty properties will lead to prejudice under Section 31.

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Chait

Dear Daniel,

This morning I received information from Thames Valley Police detailing the extent of crimes committed in empty properties across their jurisdiction.

The data are unequivocal. There is almost no empty property crime at all, and there is no difference between local authorities who do publish, and those who do not publish data on empty properties:

For 2015: Number of Crimes Cost of Crimes
Total Properties Occupied Vacant Occupied Vacant Publish Empties
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aylesbury Vale 5,587 1,719 1 £404,027 £2,130 Yes
Bracknell Forest 2,800 1,089 - £124,160 £0 Yes
Cherwell 5,044 2,344 1 £526,697 £0 Yes
Chiltern 2,856 546 - £109,511 £0 No
Milton Keynes 8,322 4,695 1 £739,361 £0 No
Oxford 4,038 3,133 2 £507,956 £1,259 No
Reading 5,659 3,248 2 £489,032 £0 Yes
Slough 4,271 2,298 1 £420,678 £0 No
South Buckinghamshire 1,993 1,105 1 £309,538 £460 Yes
South Oxfordshire 4,286 1,223 1 £260,410 £0 Yes
Vale Of White Horse 4,069 901 - £256,260 £0 Yes
West Berkshire 5,807 1,849 - £366,267 £0 No
West Oxfordshire 4,286 787 - £215,529 £0 Yes
Windsor And Maidenhead 5,083 1,826 - £355,747 £0 No
Wokingham 4,078 1,167 1 £276,115 £350 No
Wycombe 5,848 2,016 - £477,659 £0 Yes
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Grand Total 74,027 29,946 11 £5,838,948 £4,199
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Thames Valley response is here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a... Please verify for yourself.

Under these circumstances, I believe there is no legitimate reason why any local authority would have grounds to prevent publication of empty property data under Section 31(1)(a).

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Chait

SMITH Daniel, Oxford City Council

3 Attachments

Dear Mr Chait,

 

Further to my email of 6^th April I have now carried out my review of the
Council’s response to your Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

 

I have considered the following documents in carrying out the review:

·         All correspondence in the case including the further information
and statistical references you supplied

·         The decision of the First Tier Tribunal in Voyias v Information
Commissioner & London Borough of Camden EA/2011/007 (see attached).

·         The Freedom of Information Act 2000

 

I have focused my review on the FOI Officer’s refusal to supply empty
property details, applying the exemption under Section 31(1)(a) Freedom of
Information Act 2000.

 

My decision is that the FOI Officer was correct not to disclose the
information. I have reached this view for the following reasons:

 

1.    Section 31(1)(a) exempts from disclosure information which “would,
or would be likely to, prejudice – the prevention or detection of crime…”
. I take the view that this means that even if just one crime is likely to
be prevented by protecting the information, the exemption is engaged.

 

2.    It seems to me to be common sense that an empty property is
considerably more vulnerable to certain types of crime eg: criminal
damage, metal theft, theft of other material, drug cultivation, squatting
and other unlawful uses, than an occupied property as the existence of an
occupant is a major deterrent.

 

3.    In the Council’s experience these sorts of crimes are a problem in
Oxford.

 

4.    The judgement in the Voyias case which supports the view above and
confirms that release of empty property details may prejudice crime
prevention.  

 

I note your email and the TVP crime figures you supplied. However, I’m
afraid I don’t see that these carry much weight. The statistics are very
general and lack detail, they only cover recorded crimes and do not focus
on the types of crime to which empty properties are especially vulnerable.
They do not take account of the particular character and built topography
of oxford in relation to the risk of empty property crime. Even accepting
the stats as written they indicate Oxford has the highest instance of
empty property crime in the region. If protecting empty property details
is likely to prevent even one crime the exemption is properly applied.

 

Given the risk of crime against the absence of significant factors in
favour of disclosing, I find that the public interest balance is clearly
in favour of not releasing empty property information.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Daniel Smith | Lawyer | Law and Governance Service | Oxford City Council |
St Aldate’s Chambers | St Aldate's | Oxford | OX1 1DS | DX 4309 Oxford 1 |
Email: [1][email address] | Tel: 01865 252278

 

Service of documents by email is accepted at
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Dear Daniel Smith,

Before I appeal this to ICO, I wanted to check. Are you seriously suggesting that a grand total of 2 reported incidents of crime in empty properties in Oxford in 2015, and a total of 11 across the Thames Valley, somehow constitutes a crime wave?

There are 74,027 commercial properties across the Thames Valley. Occupied and actively-traded properties, however, experienced 29,946 reported crimes. That's an almost 40% chance of experiencing crime in an actively-traded business property.

In a direct comparison, the 9 local authorities who DO publish empty property data experienced 6 empty property crimes, while the 7 local authorities who DO NOT publish experienced 5 empty property crimes. Calculating that as a probability is about 0.15% chance that an empty commercial property will be subject to crime whether or not the local authority publishes empty property data.

Despite this, you state "I don’t see that these carry much weight. The statistics are very general and lack detail, they only cover recorded crimes and do not focus on the types of crime to which empty properties are especially vulnerable."

You have not provided me with any actual data quantifying the risk. I have provided you with extensive data which indicates no risk.

If you have other data which supports your concern - that somehow makes Oxford special in comparison to Reading, which has far more commercial properties, also experienced 2 crimes, and does publish data - I would appreciate it if you could make it public.

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Chait