Environmental Health Officers

The request was partially successful.

Dear Sir or Madam,

This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

For each of the financial years 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23 please provide me with the following:

1. The total number of staff employed (directly or indirectly) by the local authority to inspect residential properties for category 1 or 2 hazards.

2. Of (1), the total number who were qualified Environmental Health Officers.

3. The total number of inspections carried out by either (1) or (2) to see whether category 1 or 2 hazards exist in residential properties which are owned by the council or social housing providers, or privately rented. (Please refer to section four of the Housing Act 2004 if in doubt about the nature of the inspections.)

4. The total number of complaints that the local authority has received about hazards or poor conditions in residential properties which are owned by the council or social housing providers, or privately rented.

I would like to receive the information in a spreadsheet. If you feel that a substantive response to this request is not possible within a reasonable time frame, or the request is too broad, I would be grateful if you could contact me by email or telephone (07480728436) and provide assistance as to how I could refine the request.

Thank you,

Adam Bychawski

Freedom Info, Kirklees Borough Council

Dear Adam Bychawski

I confirm receipt of your information request and that we are dealing with this and will respond to you in due course.

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 and Environmental Information Regulations 2004 allow up to 20 working days for responding to information requests.

If you are not content with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Requests for internal reviews should be addressed to the Monitoring Officer, PO Box 1720, Huddersfield HD1 9EL. Alternatively, you can send an email to: [email address].

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you are not content with the outcome of any review you have the right under section 50 of the 2000 Act to apply to the Information Commissioner for a decision as to whether your request for information has been dealt with in accordance with the requirements of the Act. The Information Commissioner’s website is at www.ico.org.uk and gives more information about the role and duties of the Commissioner. The ICO telephone helpline on 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745 is available between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Regards

Mohammed Khan

Information Governance Team
Kirklees Council
Governance Service
PO Box 1720
HUDDERSFIELD
HD1 9EL

Telephone: 01484 221000 (voice activated switchboard – please ask for Freedom of Information)

For more information about how we deal with your personal data, please see the Kirklees Council privacy notice

show quoted sections

Freedom Info, Kirklees Borough Council

Dear Mr Bychawski,

 

I am writing in response to your request dated 08/06/2023. This has been
dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

 

May I first of all apologise for the delay in responding to your request.

 

The Council’s response to your specific questions is set out below:

 

For each of the financial years 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21,
2021/22, 2022/23 please provide me with the following:

 

1. The total number of staff employed (directly or indirectly) by the
local authority to inspect residential properties for category 1 or 2
hazards. 10.5

 

2. Of (1), the total number who were qualified Environmental Health
Officers. 0 -Kirklees Council employs people from a range of professions
to carry out its work in private rented housing, all are trained to the
necessary standard.

 

3. The total number of inspections carried out by either (1) or (2) to see
whether category 1 or 2 hazards exist in residential properties which are
owned by the council or social housing providers, or privately rented.
(Please refer to section four of the Housing Act 2004 if in doubt about
the nature of the inspections.)

 

The Council can confirm that it does hold information falling within the
scope of your request but believes that it would exceed the appropriate
time limit for complying with the request in order to provide it.

 

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public
authority to refuse a request if the cost of providing the information to
the applicant would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by the
Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004:

 

12 Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

(1) 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.

(2) Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its
obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the
estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the
appropriate limit.

 

The Regulations provide that the appropriate limit to be applied to
requests received by local authorities is £450 (equivalent to 2.5 days (or
18 hours) of work).  In estimating the cost of complying with a request
for information, an authority can only take into account any reasonable
costs incurred in:

 

(a) determining whether it holds the information,
(b) locating the information, or a document which may contain the
information,
(c) retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the
information, and
(d) extracting the information from a document containing it.

 

For the purposes of the estimate the costs of performing these activities
should be estimated at a rate of £25 per hour.

 

The Council does hold information falling within the scope requested but
much of it is in a format that would require an extensive search through
records and a judgement to be made about whether particular documents or
extracts of documents were relevant or not. 

 

The Council believes that it would take a considerable amount of time to
extract and collate the information requested; it would need to look
through approximately 1,000 files to determine whether they hold any
information falling within the scope of your request with an estimate of
10 minutes to look through each file. Taking into account the likely costs
of searching the records, the Council believes that the cost of complying
with your request would far exceed the appropriate limit of £450. 

 

The request for disclosure of the information is therefore refused under
section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

 

Although excess cost removes the Council’s obligations under the Freedom
of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information
relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised
that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it
does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the
remainder of your request.

 

4. The total number of complaints that the local authority has received
about hazards or poor conditions in residential properties which are owned
by the council or social housing providers, or privately rented.

 

2017/2018 – 1,022

2018/2019 – 1,044

2019/2020 – 1,090

2020/2021 – 938

2021/2022 - 961

2022/2023 – 1092

 

The above figures include complaints against social housing providers (non
council), these cannot be reported on separately, and include a small
number of complaints with regard to owner occupied properties.

 

If you are not content with the handling of your request, you have the
right to ask for an internal review.  Requests for internal reviews should
be submitted within 2 months of the date of receipt of the response to
your original request and should be addressed to the Monitoring Officer,
PO Box 1720, Huddersfield, HD1 9EL, you can also send an email to:
[1][email address]. 

 

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

 

If you are not content with the outcome of any review you have the right
under section 50 of the 2000 Act to apply to the Information Commissioner
for a decision as to whether your request for information has been dealt
with in accordance with the requirements of the Act.  The Information
Commissioner’s website is at [2]www.ico.org.uk and gives more information
about the role and duties of the Commissioner.  The ICO telephone helpline
on 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745 is available between 9am and 5pm, Monday
to Friday.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Information Governance Team

Kirklees Council
Governance Service

PO Box 1720
HUDDERSFIELD
HD1 9EL

 

For more information about how we deal with your personal data, please see
the [3]Kirklees Council privacy notice

 

 

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