Dear Stevenage Borough 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 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.

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.

We last requested this data more than six months ago, and this is a request for an updated and current dataset.

I'm sure you get many requests for business rates and we intend to update this national series every six 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

Dear Mr Traylor,

Thank you very much for the link to your data. As originally requested, we are most interested in property vacancy data and require the ability to reconcile each property with the VOA property master list. Your list of vacancies (http://www.stevenage.gov.uk/content/1595...) does not include the required Billing Authority Reference permitting that cross-referencing (your All Commercial Properties list does, however, in the 'Property Ref' column).

Could you please update your vacancy data to include the 'Property Ref'?

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Chait

Dear Mr Taylor,

You state that "are unable to supply the reference for properties owned by individuals as this would enable the empty properties to be identified and then linked to individuals names which would breech their rights under the Data Protection Act."

This is, quite frankly, both impossible and contradictory. We are not asking for the names of the individuals, and you have already provided the addresses for each property. All we require is the billing authority reference used to reconcile the data with the VOA master database. The VOA does not - and never has - the names of individuals who are occupants and so having the billing authority reference does not provide any additional information for identifying the tenant.

It does, however, permit us to reconcile other information we have about the property itself - but NOT the tenant - such as its floor area and historical valuations.

Please could you provide the data as requested.

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Chait

Dear FOI,

The last reply I received does not appear to have anything to do with my request ( I include it below).

Note that I am still waiting on a response to my original request (which was made on 6 November 2016 and is now significantly overdue): 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 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.

Note that you originally provided this with only partial information on the Billing Authority Reference Code and your data cannot be reconciled with the master Valuations Property list without it.

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 sincerely,

Gavin Chait

This was the erroneous response I received:

Please find information below from our NNDR Section;

Property VO Notified Effective Date Notes VOA Action Date
Unit 1 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 14.01.16 08.02.16 Completion Notice 27.01.16
Unit 2 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 14.01.16 08.02.16 Completion Notice 27.01.16
Unit 3 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 02.02.16 22.01.16 Completion Notice 03.03.16
Unit 4 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 02.02.16 22.01.16 Completion Notice 03.03.16
Unit 5 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 09.06.16 17.06.16 Completion Notice 07.09.16
Unit 6 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 09.06.16 17.06.16 Completion Notice 26.08.16
Unit 7 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 09.06.16 17.06.16 Completion Notice 07.09.16
Unit 8 Modular Business Park, Norton Road, SG1 2FZ 09.06.16 17.06.16 Completion Notice 07.09.16
Accelerator at Svg Bio Science 17.03.16 24.03.16 Completion Notice 20.08.16
Accelerator at Svg Bio Science 1st Vo Change 24.03.16 VOA Split Accelerator 15.11.16
Accelerator at Svg Bio Science 2nd Vo Change 24.03.16 VOA Split Accelerator 15.11.16
Accelerator at Svg Bio Science GA1 - GA2 Vo Change 24.03.16 VOA Split Accelerator 15.11.16
Accelerator at Svg Bio Science GA3 - GA4 Vo Change 24.03.16 VOA Split Accelerator 15.11.16
Accelerator at Svg Bio Science GA5 - GA10 Vo Change 24.03.16 VOA Split Accelerator 15.11.16
Accelerator at Svg Bio Science Car parking Vo Change 24.03.16 VOA Split Accelerator 15.11.16
PIN GREEN COMMUNITY CENTRE 07.04.16 14.06.16 Completion Notice 19.08.16

Dear David Traylor,

Thank you for the data supplied, however this does not have the individual Billing Authority Reference we requested as one of the fields in the data release. Without this, we are unable to reconcile your data with the Valuations Office master database.

Would you be able to update the data with this, please?

Yours sincerely,

Gavin Chait