Information Team Croydon
Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
Bernard Wetherill House
7th Floor, Zone B
Croydon
CR0 1EA

Contact: Information Team
[Croydon Borough Council request email]

 

NOTE: Please do not edit the subject line when replying to this email. If
you have a processing request, please ensure you quote that reference in
your emails to us.

DEAR Nine Spahr

 

Freedom of information request - FOI/7184

 

Subject: Detailed landlord data on rental property, type and residential

Your request is being considered and you will receive a response within
the statutory timescale of 20 working days, subject to the application of
any exemptions. Where consideration is being given to exemptions the 20
working day timescale may be extended to a period considered reasonable
depending on the nature and circumstances of your request. In such cases
you will be notified and, where possible, a revised time-scale will be
indicated. In all cases we shall attempt to deal with your request at the
earliest opportunity.

If we are unable to provide you with the information requested we will
notify you of this together with the reason(s) why, and details of how you
may appeal.

Please note that the directorate team may contact you for further
information where we believe that the request is not significantly clear
for us to respond fully. 

Kind Regard

Information Management Team

 

Croydon Digital Services

Assistant Chief Executive Directorate

 

7th Floor, Zone B

Bernard Weatherill House

8 Mint Walk

Croydon CR0 1EA

Information Team Croydon
Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
Bernard Wetherill House
7th Floor, Zone B
Croydon
CR0 1EA

Contact: Information Team
[Croydon Borough Council request email]

 

Dear Mr Nine Spahr

Request FOI/7184

Further to your request received on 10/03/2023, I confirm that the Council
has now considered your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000. Specifically, you have requested the following information:

 

 

"Dear Croydon Borough Council,

My name is Nine Spahr and I am a research assistant for Professor Thiemo
Fetzer at the University of Warwick who is also affiliated with the London
School of Economics and the National Institute of Social and Economic
Research, among others.

In the midst of the energy and climate crisis, retrofitting the building
stock has become a priority. Since a significant part of Croydon's
residential stock consists of private rentals, one specific challenge for
our outreach strategy is whether landlords can be mobilised to act and
retrofit their homes. It is essential to study to what extent natural
person or legal entity ownership and foreign or non-local ownership may be
an impediment, as it may require alternative policies to move “absentee”
owners to invest in the properties. 

I first request detailed information regarding the landlord data that is
stored by the council for each rental property. This information should be
provided as a comprehensive list of variables. For instance, if the
council stores information on the residential address of landlords, the
nationality of landlords, the type of landlord (such as type of
organization or freeholder versus leaseholder), the type of property held
(such as property characteristics), or the number of households in the
rental property, please provide a detailed list of these information
categories.

I also request an anonymized dataset based on the current landlord
register that provides information on the landlord’s type (natural vs.
legal entity) and resident location type (foreign vs. domestic) for each
rental property in Croydon. The type of landlords can be deduced from the
legal status of the landlord. For instance, Public Limited Companies,
Private Limited Companies, Charity or Association, Limited Liability
Partnership, are all different potential legal statuses of a legal entity.
In contrast, an individual is a natural person. The resident location type
can be deduced from the residential address of the landlord.

Specifically, I request the most granular dataset available.

 

1)Property level data

For each private rental property, I request access to the following
property-level data:

 

UPRN (if available), Address (Street, house number, locality), Postcode,
Indicator of natural person vs legal entity, Indicator of foreign vs
domestic landlord residential address.

 

2)Postcode level data

If the information rights teams judges that data 1) cannot be provided, a
justification should be provided. In that case, conditional on 1) not
being satisfied, I request the information rights team to provide access
to the dataset that is aggregated at the postcode level.

 

The tabular data layout should be:

Postcode, Indicator of natural person vs legal entity, Indicator of
foreign vs domestic landlord residential address, Count of Properties.

 

For example:

Postcode / Landlord Type (Natural Person, Legal Entity) / Landlord legal
residence (Domestic, Foreign) / Count of Properties

        CV4 7AL        /            Natural   /              Domestic  
/   12

               CV4 7AL        /          Natural   /        Foreign    
/   6

               CV4 7AL                /              Legal     /  
              Domestic  /    8

               CV4 7AL                /              Legal    
/            Foreign     /   7

 

3)Census Output Area level data

If the information rights teams judges that data 2) cannot be provided, a
justification should be provided. In that case, conditional on 2) not
being satisfied, I request the information rights team to provide access
to the dataset that is aggregated at the Census Output Area level.

 

The tabular layout should be:

Output Area Code, Indicator of natural person vs legal entity, Indicator
of foreign vs domestic landlord residential address, Count of Properties.

 

If data at the Census Output Area level is below a certain threshold to
avoid disclosure these should be flagged as being omitted.

 

4)LSOA level data

If the information rights teams judges that data 3) cannot be provided, a
justification should be provided. In that case, conditional on 3) not
being satisfied, I request the information rights team to provide access
to the dataset that is aggregated at the LSOA level.

 

The tabular layout should be:

LSOA Code, Indicator of natural person vs legal entity, Indicator of
foreign vs domestic landlord residential address, Count of Properties.

 

If data at the LSOA level is below a certain threshold to avoid disclosure
these should be flagged as being omitted.

 

5)MSOA level data

If the information rights teams judges that data 4) cannot be provided, a
justification should be provided. In that case, conditional on 3) not
being satisfied, I request the information rights team to provide access
to the dataset that is aggregated at the MSOA level.

 

The tabular layout should be:

MSOA Code, Indicator of natural person vs legal entity, Indicator of
foreign vs domestic landlord residential address, Count of Properties.

 

If data at the MSOA level is below a certain threshold to avoid disclosure
these should be flagged as being omitted.

 

Qualifiers

* If the information rights team does not have data on some of the
variables requested in the tabular layout, the dataset that comes nearest
in spirit should be provided. An explanation of why said data is not held
or shared should be provided and, in line with the spirit of FOI
legislation, the Local Authority should attempt to help the requester of
information about where or which government entity may hold said
information.

* Data should be provided as early as possible

* Datasets should be provided, ideally in a tabular and accessible format.

* Datasets can be provided in formats as they are stored by the council.
There is no need to combine them into the exact layouts requested to
reduce processing costs.

* If any of the requests involve costs beyond the statutory limit for the
council, then data that is of a similar spirit that can be extracted that
involves a cost that is within the statutory limit should be provided.

* A justification of how the council determined that the cost of
extracting said data would be beyond the statutory limit should be
provided. 

I am more than happy to provide technical assistance or input."

 

Croydon Council does not have a register of all private rented properties
in the borough and consequently there is no associated list of the
landlord name and address.   There is not an information set that
indicates whether a property is privately rented thus this cannot be
requested.

 

The Council publishes Access to Information requests and responses on its
online Disclosure Log. (Any request included within this log will be
anonymised appropriately)

To view the Council’s Disclosure Log, please visit our website available
here:

[1]The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act | Croydon Council
(disclosure-log.co.uk)

 

If you are dissatisfied with the way the Council has handled your request
under the Freedom of Information Act, you may ask for an internal review.
This should be submitted to us within 40 working days of this response.
You can do this by outlining the details of your complaint by:

 

Email:        [2][Croydon Borough Council request email]

 

Writing:     Information Team

London Borough of Croydon

Bernard Weatherill House

Floor 7 - Zone B

8 Mint Walk

Croydon, CR0 1EA

 

Any requests received after the 40 working day time limit will be
considered only at the discretion of the council.

 

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

 

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire, SK9 5AF

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Information Team

Croydon Digital Services

Assistant Chief Executive Directorate

Bernard Wetherill House,

Mint Walk,

Croydon,

CR0 1EA

 

 

[3][Croydon Borough Council request email]

[4][email address]

 

References

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1. https://croydon.disclosure-log.co.uk/
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