Expanded Retail Discount

This request has been withdrawn by the person who made it. There may be an explanation in the correspondence below.

Dear Bromsgrove District Council,

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000.

In accordance with the provisions specified within the above Act I hereby request the following information.
Required Information; - A list of all hereditaments where you have granted EXPANDED RETAIL DISCOUNT for the 2020/21 rate year.
This request relates to business rates but please only refer us to data available for download on your website if it contains the requested EXPANDED RETAIL DISCOUNT data.
• Property Reference Number (also known as Billing Authority Reference Number) of the property on which the charge is made. This is not the Rate Demand or Account Number.
• Current Rateable Value
• Account holder name
• Property address
• The billing address (where different to the property address)

Please provide the information in an electronic, spreadsheet format ideally excel. The Act requires that a response be provided within a period of 20 working days from the date hereof.

This request for information falls within the parameters of the Act but if you require clarification on any of the points above or should you wish to discuss this further then please do not hesitate to contact me. The requested information passes all required public interest tests and other requirements and is not exempt from disclosure.

Yours sincerely

Richard Roberts

foi BDC, Bromsgrove District Council

We regret that we are unable to deal with your freedom of information
request at this time. There is a huge amount of information about the
council available on its website and we would urge you to look at this
site first to find the answers to your questions.  Reports and minutes
considered by formal meetings of Council and its committees can be seen at
this [1]<link> and information about planning applications can be seen
[2]<here>.

 

Given the outbreak of coronavirus, the council is prioritising essential
services and we hope you will understand why dealing with freedom of
information requests is now not a priority. The outbreak has reduced
council staffing levels with the expectation that there will be an
increasing number of staff who are ill or self-isolating. Therefore, in
many cases, the staff who might know where to locate the information you
seek may simply not be available. Also, so far as “round robin” requests
from the media and think-tanks are concerned – particularly any that might
be to do with the council’s preparation for or response to coronavirus –
our priority has to be responding to the outbreak and keeping a limited
range of essential services running.

 

We will therefore not be providing responses to any freedom of information
requests received after 19th March 2020, beyond this generic
acknowledgement. We will review this situation at the end of May 2020
whether to extend this position. If you wish to resubmit your request
after we have ended the temporary suspension of the service, you are
welcome to do so and we will consider it at that time.

 

The Council’s media team is available to provide a comment on any specific
issue raised by the media in the usual way but this is not a route to
circumvent temporary suspension of responses to freedom of information
requests.

 

We have informed the Information Commissioner’s Office of our position and
advised them that we will also decline to deal with any complaints that
the ICO may receive as a result of the temporary suspension of this
service.

 

 

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References

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1. https://www.bromsgrove.gov.uk/council/th...
2. https://www.bromsgrove.gov.uk/planning-a...
3. mailto:[email address]
4. mailto:[Bromsgrove District Council request email]