Diversity Statistics for UCL Accommodation

The request was refused by University College London.

Dear University College London,

I am looking into diversity at UCL and in UCL accommodation, please could you provide me with the following information under the Freedom of Information Act.

1) The breakdown of residents of student accommodation for each hall of residence or student
house for the years 2007/2008 to 2017/2018 by:
a) Ethnic Background
b) Gender identity
c) Socio-economic background (parental household income)
d) Country of origin

2) The rooms prices for each hall of residence/ student house for the years 2007/2008 to 2017/2018

Yours faithfully,

Benjamin Goodwin

Finance.FOI Requests, University College London

Thank you for your message.
If you have submitted a Freedom of Information request please accept this
email as acknowledgement that your request has been received. You should
expect a response from us within 20 working days.

For details on how we use your personal information, please see UCL's
general privacy
notice: [1]www.ucl.ac.uk/legal-services/privacy/general-privacy-notice
Data Protection & FOI
Legal Services
UCL

References

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Shailer, Lee, University College London

Dear Mr Goodwin,

We have completed the compilation of information in response to your request.

We can confirm that we do hold some information of the description specified in your request.

From our preliminary assessment, we estimate that compliance with your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of information Act 2000, which is currently set at £450 (equivalent to 18 hours work) by virtue of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Section 12(1) states that:

“Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The section 12(1) exemption applies because we estimate that to determine whether we hold the requested information and then to locate, retrieve and extract it, would take longer than 18 hours to complete. This is largely because of the wide range of information you have specified; the broad temporal scope of the request, ie 11 years’ worth of data broken down by various categories; and the way the information is held here at UCL, which means that we do not hold the information in one central location - instead it is only available through several different data systems, including archived or decommissioned corporate systems. All these factors contribute towards making your request a complex one to meet.

Specifically, the diversity information for (a)-(d) below is not held on our main accommodation allocation system. To access this information would require a bespoke report to be written, the output of which would then need to be checked against the records held by student registry to verify the details. When aggregated, we estimate this will take much longer than 18 hours and over the appropriate limit at which point the University is no longer obliged to process the request. So in accordance with section 12(1) the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) this email acts as a Refusal Notice.

We could however provide some information, such as the costings for halls accommodation from 2012/13 to 2017/18. Let me know if we can assist you further with this.

If you are unhappy with our response to your request and wish to make a complaint or request a review of our decision, please email [email address]. Emails should include the words ‘Internal Review’ in the subject and be marked For the Attention of the Vice Provost Operations, alternatively you should write to:

Vice Provost Operations
University College London
1-19 Torrington Place
London WC1E 7HB

Please note, complaints and requests for internal review received more than two months after the initial decision will not be handled.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner at the address given below. You should do this within two months of our final decision.

If you have any queries or concerns, please contact me using the details provided in this letter and including the request reference number.

Further information on the Freedom of Information Act is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
SK9 5AF

Telephone 01625 545700
www.ico.org.uk

Yours sincerely,

Lee Shailer
Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officer
University College London
Legal Services, Finance and Business Affairs
6th Floor, 1-19 Torrington Place
London, WC1E 7HB

020 3108 8726 (internal ext 58726)
[email address]

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