To the information officer,

I am emailing to request the following information from the council under the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

Note: This request does not relate to social housing stock

1) A list of building, land and heritage assets disposed of (i.e. the council no longer owned the asset) by the council between 2014/2015 and the date on which you received this request, including:

- Name of the asset
- What type of asset is it - building, land or heritage?
- Address (if applicable)
- Postcode (if applicable)
- UPRN (if possible)
- The date it was disposed of
- The type of disposal (for example sale, community asset transfer, etc)
- The valuation of the asset at the point it was classified as an asset held for sale (both lower amount and fair value less, if possible)
- How much it was sold for? (if applicable)
- Who it was sold to?
- How it was disposed of (open market, auction, etc)

2) A list of building, land and heritage assets acquired by the council between 2014/2015 and the date on which you received this request, including:

- Name of the asset
- What type of asset is it - building, land or heritage?
- Address
- Postcode
- UPRN (if possible)
- The date it was acquired
- Who was it acquired from?
- How much did it cost?
- Is it now classed as an investment property?

3) How many land, building and heritage assets did the council have as of
a) the beginning of 2014/15
b) the date on which you received this request

I would like to receive this information electronically a spreadsheet, with the points above as the column headers.

If the decision is made to withhold some of this information using exemptions in the Act, please inform me of that fact and cite the exemptions used.

Please note the questions:
Who it was sold to?
Who was it acquired from?

In response to test FOIs some local authorities declined to release this information relating to these questions, arguing it was exempt under Section 40 - Personal information.

The definition of personal data referred to in the FOIA is that used by the Data Protection Act. This states that, for data to constitute personal data, “it must relate to a living individual, and that individual must be identifiable”. As a result, unless the response relates to a person (or a sole trader) it cannot be exempt under Section 40.

If you need clarification please contact me at this email address. Under your section 16 duty to provide advice and assistance I would expect you to contact me if you find this request unmanageable in any way before the 20th working day.

I would be grateful if you could confirm in writing that you have received this request, and I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

Thank you for your time,

Gareth

Dear Information Governance,

I have not yet received a response to my FOI request, entitled Council Assets, dated 31 July 2018.
By law the council should have responded promptly and by 30 August 2018.
Could you provide an update as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Gareth Davies

Dear Cumbria County Council FOI department,

I have not yet received a response to my FOI request, entitled Council Assets, dated 31 July 2018.

By law the council should have responded promptly and by 30 August 2018, 18 days ago. A previous reminder has also gone unanswered.

Could you provide an update by the end of today (September 17) or I will have no choice but to file a complaint with the ICO.

Yours faithfully,

Gareth Davies

Dear Information Governance team,

Thank you for your response to FOI IG 00732.

Would it be possible for you to provide the information in a spreadsheet as original requested?

I am not able to transfer the information in the current format.

Yours sincerely,

Gareth Davies

Dear Cumbria County Council,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Cumbria County Council's handling of my FOI request 'Council assets' (IG 00732).

I am specifically appealing against the decision to withhold information based on Section 43, Commercial Sensitivity.

1) I strongly believe that Section 43 does not apply this case. However, even if it did, it does not cover all the information withheld by the council. It would clearly not harm the council's financial interests to reveal who an asset had been sold to or bought from. This would have no impact on the council's "bargaining power" whatsoever.

2) More importantly, Section 43 should not have been applied at all. The requested information is for completed asset disposals and acquisitions. There is no risk that the council's "bargaining power" would be affected at all by the release of information such as sale/purchase price or vendor/purchaser information because these are completed transactions. The council's response acknowledges that some of this information is available via the Land Registry, so and future business partner of the council could already access this information if they needed to. There is nothing within the information I have requested that anyone would reasonably think would "negatively affect [the council's] ability to achieve the best possible sale/purchase price".

3) Furthermore, the council says it is in the public interest that the council secures the best possible price when negotiating sales. Firstly, this would only apply to withholding the information for disposed assets. Secondly, how would the public know the council is achieving the best possible price if this information isn't published? At this point the people of Cumbria have no idea whether they are getting a fair deal, and rejecting this FOI does nothing to address that.

4) The public interest test appears only to have been given cursory consideration. There are clearly more factors in favour of disclosure, including:
- The financial pressure facing local authorities in England, including Cumbria, has never been as intense. As such there is a huge public interest in knowing as much information as possible about the assets councils acquire and dispose.
- This public interest has only increased since the introduction of Flexible Use of Capital Receipts in March 2016, which gave local authorities, for the first time, the ability to use the proceeds of asset sales towards their running costs. No more than ever it is important to the public know what the council is doing with publicly-owned assets
- The council is already required to publish an annual list of its assets under the Local Government Transparency Code. Therefore the public interest in this area is well-established

It is my firm belief that the public interest in releasing this information strongly outweighs that of withholding it, especially given the council is exaggerating the potential risks of doing so.

I have submitted this FOI to 353 local authorities in England and Cumbria is the first council to withhold details under Section 43. If this review does not result in the information being supplied to me I will take up the case with the ICO.

Yours faithfully,

Gareth Davies

Dear Information Governance,

Would it be possible to have an update as to the status of the internal review relating to my council assets FOI request?

The last information I received was on October 2.

Yours sincerely,

Gareth Davies