Exempt accommodation
Dear Broadland District Council,
This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.
This request concerns “exempt accommodation”. The UK Parliament defines this as: “Supported housing which is exempt from certain Housing Benefit provisions. It is a sector which houses more marginalised groups with support needs, such as recent prison leavers; care leavers; those fleeing domestic violence; and homeless people with substance dependence or mental health issues.”
I understand that housing benefit for people in “exempt accommodation” is paid by the council directly to landlords.
I would like to request the following information:
(1) Please state how much housing benefit has been paid by the council directly to landlords to provide “exempt accommodation” for those in receipt of the benefits. Please provide the figures for each of the past three financial years (2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21), as well as any available data for 2021/22.
(2) Please provide a list of the 20 landlords that have received the highest amount in housing benefit from the council for providing “exempt accommodation” for those in receipt of the benefits. Again, please provide this information for each of the past three financial years (2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21) as well as any available data for 2021/22. For each year, please (a) provide the landlord’s full name or company name, (b) state the total amount they received from the council in each year.
I would like to highlight how the Information Commissioner’s Office has previously ruled that this type of information should be disclosed. For example, in 2015, the ICO held that Torbay Council was not entitled to withhold the names of landlords who have directly received the largest amounts of housing benefit. In 2014, the ICO also ruled that Halton Borough Council was wrong to withhold similar information.
I would like to receive the data in an Excel format. If you feel that a substantive response to this request is not possible within a reasonable timeframe, I would be grateful if you could contact me and provide assistance as to how I can refine the request. If you need any clarification, please contact me.
I look forward to receiving a response in 20 working days. Many thanks.
Yours faithfully,
Jenna Corderoy
SUBJECT: PLEASE READ: acknowledgement / response to your request
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Act (FOIA) requests within 20 working days and as soon as is reasonably
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3. mailto:[email address]
Dear Jenna
I refer to your Freedom of Information request, detailed below. Please
note that this response is on behalf of both South Norfolk Council and
Broadland District Council.
Under section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am
advising you that the Councils do hold some of the information, which you
have requested.
I have made some investigations into the likely time and cost of locating,
retrieving and extracting the information requested and should advise you
that this would take a significant amount of time. This is because there
is no requirement for us to classify these types of payments separately.
To answer your query, it would be necessary to draw up a list of all the
claims that are marked as Exempt / Supported, and then manually add up the
expenditure for each year. Additionally, as Exempt claims are not
classified separately, we are only able to see a snapshot in time of how
many live claims are marked as ‘Exempt’ or ‘Supported’ in the rent costs
screen. To go back in previous years, we would not be able to ascertain
how many of these claims are live now, were live then, or whether there
were any that were live then that have since been cancelled. Therefore, we
do not hold information relating to past claims that have been cancelled
and cannot provide figures in relation to overall yearly totals as
requested.
In terms of current claims There are approximately 680 addresses in
relation to Broadland District Council alone. To check each address for a
claim, check which payments were for this address then add up the payments
for that address would take on average ten minutes each. This would
equate to 113 hours of work. Therefore, the cost of this work would
exceed the "appropriate" limit stated in the Freedom of Information and
Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. Under
section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, in this situation South
Norfolk Council and Broadland District Council have the option of refusing
to supply the information and this email therefore acts as a notice of
refusal.
You have a right of appeal against our decision. In the first instance
this appeal must be internal and we enclose a document detailing how you
can request an internal review. We hope that you will not feel it
necessary to invoke an appeal, but if you do we will take every care to
re-assess your request and let you have our findings.
Please quote SFOI 22-73 and BFOI 22-82 in any further correspondence
concerning this request.
Regards
Sue
Sue White
Senior Governance and Deputy Monitoring Officer
t 01508 533800 e [email address]
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